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Grizzly Rage
(2007)
Plot
A group of teenager friends are
out celebrating their graduation with a car trip through the woods. But they
break into a restricted area and accidentally run down a young bear cub.
Soon the friends find themselves running for their lives from the gigantic
mother grizzly who comes looking for her cub.
Review
Let's forget the notion that animals
take revenge on humans when one of their offspring or family is killed.
We've seen it before in many films (Roy Scheider even asks a scientist that
question in Jaws 2) and it's an implausible but necessary plot
device. So just go with the flow. I'm not a huge fan of killer bears. To me,
they don't have the same menace as a shark or tiger. Don't get me wrong,
they're just as deadly and I wouldn't want to face one in the woods
somewhere. But they've always been portrayed in a more positive light in the
media. When someone says bear, I think of a teddy bear, a Care Bear or even
Gentle Ben - not a huge killer grizzly. Grizzly Rage does little to
change my opinion.
With only a handful of a characters, a handful of outdoor locations and only
so many things that can happen between four teenagers, a car, the woods and
a killer bear, Grizzly Rage is slow going which is ironic since the
film gets going quickly. The bear cub is run over early on, the mother bear
makes her oath of revenge and the situation goes pear-shaped for the
teenagers. Maybe it was done too soon because the characters have little
chance to develop and the rest of the film involves the same few characters
trying to escape from the bear. The script is worthless. Characters survive
all sorts of mishaps including getting their car flipped over by the grizzly
and getting caught in bear traps. They obviously come out of the situations
in the greatest of health, with perfect smiles, perfect hair, etc. Not only
are they super human and near invincible, they're also super daft. This
bunch of characters are just mindless idiots with a shred of common sense or
a brain between them. They make some ridiculous decisions - in order to get
help, one character sets off on a long walk through the woods wearing only
flip-flops and in the knowledge that a giant bear wants to kill him.
Catching salmon in a river was never as easy a meal for the bear than this
dumb teenager. These dumb decisions mean that you end up rooting for the
bear to kill them all. After all, she does have a valid excuse for wanting
them all dead - they killed her cub. To be fair, I was rooting for the bear
from the beginning but seeing these jackasses mow down that cute little cub
just made me more bloodthirsty. The small cast also means that the body
count is low and we're going to be stuck with some of these annoying
characters for a long time simply because there's no one else to kill off!
The bear is the best actor in the entire film. It's varying talents range
from frenzied range to sombre sadness. Maybe it's because it was acting in
an entirely different film (or documentary) and the makers of this one just
culled some stock footage. A stage hand wearing a pair of ridiculous
over-sized fake bear hands is ready for the close-ups during attack scenes.
The editing between shots of the bear and shot of the head is pretty bad and
it happens way too often which means it draws attention to itself and the
fact it looks rubbish. I guess it's common sense not to actually film a real
killer bear interacting with the cast, no matter how tame or trained the
bear may be. So the director does as good a job as possible in trying to
make it realistic. But this is David DeCoteau we're talking about, a man who
has made such awesome films as Final Scream, Legend of the Mummy
and Retro Puppet Master. So you know there's going to be some weird
slant to the whole thing and low and behold it does. What was a reasonably
realistic story about a killer bear wanting revenge for her cub's death is
suddenly turned on it's head when we are told that there is a toxic dump
nearby and the bear must have been mutated! Woah! Not just a gigantic killer
grizzly bear but one that has been feeding off toxic waste for years. No
wonder it can send people soaring through the air with one swipe of it's
paws. The film also lacks decent blood effects. Bear attacks are accompanied
by CGI blood splatters on the screen as opposed to more traditional make-up
effects. It's almost as if the effects were made for an entirely different
film but they just nabbed them for this because they thought it looked cool.
Verdict
I'd rather watch The Care Bears Movie than have to sit
through Grizzly Rage again. I wonder whether the killer bear knows that
documentary footage of her has been used without her permission. Get your
royalties whilst you can! |
