Bear (2010)

Plot
Late for a 30th birthday party, a trip through the country turns into a nightmare for a group of four friends when their mini-van blows a tyre. This attracts the curiosity of a grizzly bear which one of the group quickly kill with a gun. This turns out to be an even worse mistake as the grizzly's massive eight-foot tall mate arrives, trapping the group in the mini-van.

Review
We need another killer bear film like a hole in the head. It's a sparse sub-genre that began with Grizzly back in 1976. We've already had a recent killer bear film in Grizzly Rage from 2007 and it's not like the plots of the films are vastly different. I guess it shows the limitations to what one can do with the notion of a killer grizzly bear and there's a reason why there are so few killer bear films (look at the amount of killer shark and killer snake films in the meantime). Bears just aren't in the same fear factor bracket as the aforementioned creatures because, as I said in my review for Grizzly, they're usually portrayed as cuddly animals in the media. The Care Bears, Gentle Ben, Rupert the Bear, Paddington Bear, Fozzy Bear, Barney, Sooty, Winnie the Pooh, Superted, Yogi Bear....need I go on? I know they are deadly in real life and I certainly wouldn't want to cross one in the woods. But come on, we'd rather picture them as furry and cuddly as opposed to something that would crush you and maul you. Bear will not change my perceptions of that in any shape or form.

Apart from not taking a bear as serious as a threat as the film would want you to, the problems with Bear are evident from almost the first scene - that of characters. They're are so annoying. They spend most of their time arguing with each other. It's funny how these life-or-death situations cause people to suddenly reveal all sorts of secrets and histories with each other that they'd never disclose. It usually makes the situation worse because instead of pulling together, they turn on each other. Here is no exception as it turns out they're all sleeping around with someone else and one of them is pregnant. The constant bickering and sniping between the four people means that you'll quickly forget they're trapped inside the van with a giant grizzly bear outside. Such is the lack of focus that the bear receives for a good proportion of the running time. These characters talk about their lives, their careers, their loves and anything but the freakin' grizzly bear outside the car and how to escape. I don't know about you but I'd rather be putting together a plan of action rather than worry about how much my mortgage is going to cost. The small cast need to be able to handle themselves in a film like this because they'll share a bigger proportion of screen time. It's a shame then that Katie Lowes, Mary Alexander Steifvater, Brendan Michael Coughlin and Patrick Scott Lewis are probably the four worst actors that director John Rebel could have found. Not one of them has an ounce of screen presence. In fact if black holes were actors, then surely these four would be blacker than black (am I allowed to say that?)