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Grizzly Rage (TV)
R1 - America - Genius Products Review written by and copyright: Andreas Petersen (15th May 2008). |
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The Film
 I had high hopes for "Grizzly Rage". I really did. I’m a huge fan of movies so-bad-they’re-good. I always thought that strait-to-video horror films would be a potential gold mine when it came to comically horrible movies, but as time goes on, I’m discovering that this really isn’t the case, and "Grizzly Rage", directed by David DeCoteau, is no exception. When I first heard "Grizzly Rage’s" plot synopsis, I could barley contain my excitement. The story goes a little something like this: Four recent high school grads, Wes (Tyley Hoechlin), Sean (Graham Kosakoski), Ritch (Brody Harms), and Laura (Kate Todd), take a trip out into the woods to celebrate a new chapter in their lives. Instead of camping in their originally planned designated area, the group votes to camp out in some restricted area that is fenced off. When they get there, the group goes on a joy ride, and accidentally hit a bear cub, and now the mother of the cub is out for revenge. Seriously, I haven’t read such a great recipe for cinematic-disaster in ages. I was right, but only sort of. "Grizzly Rage" starts out great, as in really bad, but in that beautiful sort of way that is really entertaining to watch. The four kids talk like the most stereotypical students, beginning every sentence with “dude” and ending each sentence with “bro”. They form the “rock on” gesture with their hands whenever something cool happens, or whenever they listen to horrible rock music in their car. They wear backwards hats, surfer shorts, and sandals. The sheer ridiculousness of it all grabbed me. Sorrowfully, 20 minutes in, the movie let go. When the vicious mama bear makes her appearance, I thought I was going to watch her tear at least two of these kids apart, which would have made their dialogue and teenage-ery in the beginning worth it. However, whenever the bear attacks, the camera cuts to a close up shot to a person in bear chaps sort of rolling over the person being mauled, and a really lame blood splat hits the camera. The thing is, it’s not even real-fake blood, but rather some sort of animation that looks as though it were made in flash. The rest of the movie has to be one of the dullest 70 minutes of my life. The characters come up with ways to survive, but each one takes up extended periods of time, and end up adding nothing to the plot’s progression. Characters will spend ten minutes crawling up a mountain to get a better signal on their phone, see the bear, run away, and that’s it. The last 15 minutes of the film are particularly excruciating, as the characters form plan after plan, and none of them even do anything to stop the bear. Maybe the filmmaker’s behind this movie wanted to convey a feeling of “this bear is unstoppable!” but I just got really bored. Thankfully, the movies ends in one of the most comically abrupt ways I have seen in recent memory, so at least I got a few laughs. But with a movie like this, a “few laughs” really isn’t enough to deal with it. I need the dialogue to be trite, the gore to be excessive, and the drama to be cheesy, not completely bland in all three categories. Save your time and rent a real bear movie, like the 1976 classic "Grizzly."
Video
"Grizzly Rage" is presented in an inconsistent 1.78:1 widescreen anamorphic transfer. I say this because at times the movie looks decent, with the green colors of the woods coming out fine, but sprinkled throughout the film, shots will be obviously filmed with a different camera of far less quality. Shots that are within a car or close up along a house or rock formation, for what ever reason, seem to be shot with some sort of hand held camera your dad would use to film your camping vacation. These shots got really annoying, and disrupted what shred of linear story telling the movie had.
Audio
"Grizzly Rage" Is offered in an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track. The sound is alright, but at times I felt as though the background music got too loud, drowning out a few line. The soundtrack of this movie is really something, by which I mean something really bad, whether a scene is sporting the generic horror theme, or the incredibly bad rock songs that play whenever the kids formulate a plan. There are no optional subtitles for this title.
Extras
None. I guess you could say this disc is pretty “bear”. Anyone? Anyone? I’m sorry.
Overall
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