When a meteor crashes in the water off the coast of a small Irish island, it brings with it bloodsucking squid-like aliens. When strange things start to happen, a few of the townsmen realize that the only way to survive is by getting extremely drunk. This is the premise for Jon Wright’s sci-fi horror comedy, Grabbers.
How amazing does that plot sound, right? Too bad there is more to it. The film starts off with an attractive, uptight Garda named Lisa (Ruth Bradley) being stationed on the island to the dismay of Garda Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle), a single drunk who does what he pleases and dislikes Lisa’s “by the book” attitude. The two of them pair up to investigate the various disturbances which eventually lead to the above discovery.
Grabbers feels very much like Ireland’s answer to Attack the Block. They both have fantastic special effects, both have very fun and original premises but the key difference between the two is that Attack the Block is laugh out loud funny whereas Grabbers is not. In fact, there isn’t much humor to really be found throughout the entire film, only a chuckle here and there and mostly near the end. It this key difference that made me disappointed as the plot lends itself to a world of great Irish and or drunken humor.
Maybe its humor is mostly subtle, but I wanted something very outlandish and had hoped that the being drunk aspect would have been featured throughout the better part of the film rather than just at the end. I could have also done without the whole love story side plot, it felt forced upon us early on and seemed like an attempt to distract us from the more important issue at hand.
Jon Wright did a pretty good job directing and getting some decent performances out of Richard Coyle, Ruth Bradley, Russell Tovey and Lalor Roddy but Kevin Lehane didn’t write enough comedy into the script to make it the jolly good sci-fi horror-time it should have been.
I’ve already mentioned that I’m big fan of the premise, but the other aspect that I’m a fan of is of the 
aliens themselves. Besides death, the aliens provide some comedic relief in the form of their offspring, the newly hatched bloodsuckers bounce around and sound like goofy cartoon characters. As for their look, these aliens were basically giant octopuses that could roll around the land and had a large ring of teeth in the middle of their body. They could also shoot a long tentacle into people that acted as the bloodsucking leech tool. The aliens only need blood and water to survive so using alcohol as a poison is a brilliant way to kill off the alien invaders. Suffice to say the effects were really well done.
While a decent watch for fans of genre films, Grabbers doesn’t nearly exploit all the potential that the brilliant plot lends itself to. There is so much room for growth that it seems like the filmmakers took the easy route just so they could make it into a full length feature. Despite all that it still has its fun moments and something I’d consider checking out on either VOD or home video for the premise alone.
Rating: Amazing premise with lots of potential but falls short on the comedic front (5.8/10)
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