Grabbers (EIFF 2012)

Last year, Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block demonstrated that, post-Shaun of the Dead, the UK was capable of producing impressive monster movies which could acknowledge a slew of Hollywood influences while still maintaining their own identity.  Jon Wright’s Grabbers has now, it seems, done the same for Ireland, albeit in slightly more parodic fashion.

The film begins (inevitably) with a mysterious object falling to Earth, and the grisly deaths of a crew of Irish fishermen who are foolhardy enough to investigate the crash site.  The following morning, dead sea-life begins to wash up on the shores of Erin Island, and the local Garda start to suspect that something strange might be happening in their little community.  It isn’t long before people start disappearing, slimy things are going bump in the night, and the mainland begins to seem a very long way away.  Standing alone against blood-sucking creatures from outer space, the locals of Erin Island – in the time-honoured tradition of classic creature features – pull together for an epic last stand.

Heading up the cast is Richard Coyle as washed-up, drunken police officer Ciaran O’Shea.  Coyle’s leading role in the TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal seems to have lifted him out of the career rut he experienced upon leaving Steven Moffat’s Coupling in 2002, and in Grabbers (one of two films he’s appearing in at this festival – the other being Luis Prieto’s Pusher) he once again displays his talent for combining dramatic and comedic styles to great effect.  Ruth Bradley is by turns funny and sympathetic as uptight and ambitious young officer Lisa Nolan, whose initial clashes with the cynical O’Shea form the beginnings of a will-they-won’t-they romance.  Russell Tovey (Being Human, Doctor Who) rounds out the cast in the obligatory boffin role, with fine comedic support coming from Lalor Roddy and David Pearse as bewildered locals turned amateur monster hunters.

Grabbers manages a fine balancing act of horror and comedy, helped immensely by the talented cast and surprisingly impressive CGI.  It’s scary when it needs to be, and its alien antagonists are (for the most part) conceptually novel as well as being brilliantly realised.  It’s also very funny, much of the humour coming from the ‘mismatched partner’ routine of O’Shea and Nolan, as well as the bumbling response of the island’s locals to the ever-growing threat.  The film wears its influences on its sleeve at all times, but crucially never slips into full-blown parody.  There are knowing references to The Thing, Jurassic Park, Predator, Aliens and Night of the Living Dead – and the appearance of a quarry in the final act will bring a wry smile to the face of any fan of classic British sci-fi – but Grabbers remains an exciting, scary and funny film in its own right.

In fact, the only place the film falls down is in its portrayal of Ireland and the Irish.  Lingering shots of the local countryside pepper the film, and, whilst beautiful, give the impression of having been shoehorned in merely to boost tourism.  Their appearance often jars with the otherwise swift pacing of the film, which only serves to highlight their redundancy in purely cinematic terms.  Furthermore, Grabbers‘ portrayal of the Irish people feels like something of a lazy cultural stereotype.  If writer Kevin Lehane and the Irish Film Board wish to celebrate and perhaps reclaim this stereotype then fair play to them, but there’s something about an Irish sci-fi film which features drunkenness as a major plot point that seems a little crude in storytelling terms.  These criticisms, however, shouldn’t be made too harshly; Grabbers is a triumph for Irish cinema, and for science-fiction cinema in general.

Jim Taylor, geekzine correspondent, reporting from the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2012