Grabbers (2012) is a British-Irish movie about a group of people who realize that the only way to survive alien invasion is to keep drinking. The movie was directed by Jon Wright and written by Kevin Lehane. Grabbers (2012) movie review
The story goes that while backpacking across the world, Lehane was getting eaten by mosquitos. The locals told him that the trick was to eat Malamite (yeast spread) and they will leave him alone. After that he started wondering whether mosquitoes will get hangover from drinking drunk people’s blood. That gave an idea and he immediately wrote down “get drunk to survive”.
The movie was shot during one of the harshest winters in Ireland. This made it very hard to shoot and the production was delayed for many days. However, the crew pulled through it and were very happen to finish the shoot. Most of them were Irish with the main actor Richard Coyle growing up in England (his parents were Irish).
The movie did not have a huge budget so the filmmakers stretched out their budget as much as possible. They wanted the creatures to have an aquatic look to them with lots of tentacles and eyes. In fact they share a lot of similarities to facehuggers from the Alien (1979) movie. There are also few other movie references scattered around (Night of the Living dead, Critters, Jaws, Jaws 2, etc).
As for the main characters, Richard Coyle played an alcoholic Garda Ciaran O’Shea and Ruth Bradley played a workaholic Garda Kisa Nolan. They are both cops who played off each other pretty well. Their dialogue never felt stiff or unrealistic. Also, because the movie needed them to be drunk for a long period of time, the director filmed the two being drunk for real so they can observe their ticks when they are drunk and use it in the movie. After the filming the footage was promptly destroyed due to their drunken embarrassment.
The movie has a heart. It has horror elements, romance, and comedy all rolled into one. It was very surprising to see how much they were able to do with their budget. They had an impressive score, a lot of time to work on the creature designs (males, female, and little grabbers), as well as a cast that were all happy to work on horrible weather to get it done. In the movie they had different colors to accentuate certain colors (green for landscapes, bright yellow for beach where it was very cold, and green/blue for inside scenes. The whole movie felt like it was building up to scares rather than rushing into it. It made sure to introduce the characters before things start to pick up.
Grab a beer and fight for your life!
Thanks fo reading my Grabbers (2012) movie review
