GRABBERS

Ambitious Dublin Garda Lisa (Ruth Bradley) arrives on the picturesque Erin Island to report for her first day of duty providing relief there. Her colleague O’Shea (Richard Coyle) is there to meet her off the boat, nursing a hangover: a daily occurrence for him, being as he’s a – in her words – "raging alcoholic".

O’Shea warns Lisa that Erin Island is a sleepy place. "It’s always the quiet places where the mad shit happens" she responds. Although, I bet even she doesn’t expect anything as mad as what’s to come …

On their first shift together, the pair are summoned to the local beach where marine ecologist Smith (Russell Tovey) is busy inspecting a group of whales that have washed up dead onto the shore. Smith assumes they swam into rocks – but we know different, as we’re privy to several scenes of fishermen being dragged into the sea and killed by something unseen.

Aside from Paddy (Lalor Roddy), that is, who’s inadvertently captured an unidentified creature in his lobster pot … and unwisely decided that the best thing to do with it is take it home and let it soak in his bathtub.

When said beast attempts to devour Paddy, he takes it to Smith’s lab for further inspection. O’Shea and Lisa go along for the ride, and the quartet discover that what they have is a female alien that thrives on water and blood. What’s more, it was pregnant: Smith retrieves an unhatched egg as proof.

It soon becomes apparent that a male alien must be nearby too, so the hunt is on to find that before it finds water to sustain itself. The islanders reason that they are safe on dry land in the meantime. However, a storm has been forecast for that evening …

Deducing that the female alien’s ailing state is due to the fact that it tried to feed off Paddy’s blood while he was pissed, our Garda heroes determine that the best way to keep their small island community safe until the coastguard can get to them the following morning is to keep them dry from the rain, and completely drunk. So, a lock-in at the island’s only pub is called for.

Inevitably, this results in a load of inebriated locals hollering at one another, jovially singing the likes of "Whiskey in the Jar" in the next breath, and generally getting so caned that when the squid-like monsters finally burst into the pub they can barely stand straight to employ their arsenal of flare guns and water pistols against them.

GRABBERS is directed by Jon Wright and is enormous fun once it gets going. Which doesn’t take long. The characters are all likeable, and the excellent cast really take to Kevin Lehane’s clever, pithy script.

There are a couple of love interests for Lisa to consider, but other than that the story is free from flabby background or sub-plots. Instead, the action comes thick and fast, laced throughout with natural verbal humour and the odd visual gag too. The balance of humour and horror works well.

To be lazy, the film feels akin to a cross between SLITHER and THE MIST. But its jokes hit the mark more than those in SLITHER, while the CGI here is much superior to that seen in THE MIST.

GRABBERS is presented uncut in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, enhanced for 16x9 televisions and boasting a nice 1080p transfer. Colours are bold but never overwhelming; flesh-tones are accurate. The level of detail and depth in some scenes is remarkable. There is some natural soft focus evident elsewhere, but the overall result is that this is a very filmic, authentic-looking HD presentation.

Likewise, the English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track impresses at all the right turns. Optional English subtitles for the hard-of-hearing are well-written and easy to read.

Sony’s UK blu-ray disc is a 50GB dual layer affair, encoded to region B. It opens to an animated main menu page. The pop-up menus include a scene-selection menu allowing access to the film via 16 chapters. There’s also an option in this sub-menu to bookmark your favourite scenes from the film.

Wright’s affable audio commentary track kick-starts a host of enjoyable bonus features. From the off, Wright announces that this track will be a little different from the norm: to avoid the usual forced nature of such undertakings, he’s pre-recorded conversations with "some of the key people who worked on the film" and cut-and-pasted them into a running commentary format. It works; it’s fun.

The film’s original trailer is short at 1 minute in length, but fun and brisk all the same.

Christian Henson atmospheric, pulsating score gets a welcome isolated track. This is a feature we don’t see often enough on discs these days, and one that I was pleased to find here. These musical pieces, some of which are surprisingly beautiful (it’s no surprise that Jerry Goldsmith is cited as an influence on the commentary track), cover some 61 minutes of your time. It’s an hour worth spending.

Wright pops up again for a video interview which inevitably covers some of the same ground as the commentary track. This is filmed at FrightFest and is conducted by Alan Jones. It’s an enjoyable, fast-moving 16-minute chat.

A 16-minute Behind The Scenes featurette covers the script, the cast, the shoot etc. It offers a combination of talking-head interviews and on-set footage, and is an insightful documentary.

25 minutes of outtakes offer a mixture of corpsing and extended takes.

An 8-minute photo gallery rounds off the extras.

GRABBERS is well-made, genuinely funny on many occasions and achieves a fine balance between its tension and humour. Even the CGI – something I generally detest – is well done. It’s hard not to be entertained by this film.

Appropriately, then, Sony’s blu-ray disc is a highly entertaining proposition too.

Also available on DVD.

Review by Stuart Willis