Horror in the Woods: Grizzly

This movie started with so much promise, but ultimately it fell short of delivering on it's VERY promising set up. However, it wasn't a complete let down, even though it was pretty much Jaws with a bear...

The opening: Two women are breaking camp in the woods when an animal (presumably a bear) mauls each of them POV slasher style. The first woman gets it at the camp site, and the second woman takes cover inside a shack that the (presumably) bear literally tears apart before also killing her.

The next time we see that shack: It's all in one piece again and the bear has seemingly hung the woman's body from the rafters (before or after putting the shack back together, who can be sure) because she falls from the ceiling and freaks the hell of the rangers searching for the two women.

The actual plot: I couldn't really tell you, this one is aaaaaall over the place. But basically, it's Jaws in the woods with a bear.


The love interest that vanishes into thin air: A good chunk of the first half of the film is spent setting up a romance between our "hero" (pictured left) and a reporter. They finally kiss at one point, and then we literally never see her again. Very strange.

The bear's MO: At the start of the film it seems like the bear is strictly targeting women, so much so that the rangers discuss it at one point. And then, very suddenly, the bear decides to kill dudes, kids and other bears, and no one mentions the initial pattern again. Over all the bear seems to be killing indiscriminately, though the rangers are pretty sure the bear is hunting for food, never mind that the bear has already killed enough people to sustain him for a good three years...

Kinda surprisingly gory: Parts of this film are VERY gory in contrast to rest of the film. This is especially well illustrated in a scene where a little boy, innocently playing with a bunny in his yard, is mauled by the bear. The final shot of that scene: a substantial  hold on the kid's newly ripped off leg. It's SUPER graphic and absolutely doesn't fit with the humdrum tone of the rest of the flick.

And then, there was a rocket launcher: There's not much happening between bear kills (aside from ASININE dialogue), but in the last few mins of the film, the movie tries really hard to make up for that by EXPLODING A BEAR WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER. That part is pretty undeniably fun.



via GIPHY

Horror in the Woods: The Long Weekend

We screened this flick at the MOA to mixed reviews, but I love this movie. You want to know why? I'll tell ya:

Never in the history of film has there been a more satisfying death on screen: There's a bit in the documentary Not Quite Hollywood where Quentin Tarantino expresses exactly how I feel about the couple in this film: this movie's two goals are to introduce you to this couple, and to make you cheer their inevitable death. And boy do you cheer!

The horror elements actually come from all of nature: Many horror movies that utilize nature in their horror elements do so in the form of a single scene (like Evil Dead), or focus on one element of nature (like Frogs, or the Birds). This movie actually makes all of nature the stalker-killer, eliminating overly complicated exposition or redundant kills. The viewer is never sure what's going to happen, and that gives the film a layer of creepiness that can only come from your imagination.

One flaw [slight SPOILER]: The topic of abortion is somewhat ambiguously introduced, implying that nature has made it's mind up about these two because of their choice. But over all these characters are horrible enough to justify their ends, without adding any elements of "but she also had an abortion". (Honestly the couple terminating a pregnancy is about the only redeeming thing they do because they absolutely should not have brought children into the world together.) There is room to interpret this element as just another layer of how absolutely divided they are on every front, but other devices could have been used to illustrate that without leaving room for viewers to pin their demise on her having an abortion.

We really like this one: Maybe it's because both of us have worked customer service type jobs most of our lives, but something about this one scratches an itch we didn't know we had.