GRABBERS

Grabbers is not a film that dawdles. It thrusts itself on viewers almost immediately with a burst of slimy tentacles sucking a couple out of their cottage, whisking them away ti a certain un-rosy future. Old fashioned sea monsters are back. This time on a sea island off the luscious coast of Northern Ireland her the film was shot. The monsters have been updated in blood-sucking, octopi-like aliens, whose young are wriggling little creatures with outsized youths, hatching from their fat pods already ravenous. The alien threat is known to only a few: two gardas or Irish cops, a scene-stealing English scientist and a perpetually drunk but lucid Irishman, among others. With a heavy storm coming, they must protect the local population while keeping them in the dark about the real threat.

Comic scenes and hilarious dialogue function to the hilt, with no nods to its predecessors. Grabbers is a very Irish film. But Jon Wright successfully avoids the tired clichés of a lingering scenic camera and little irony, on both the benefits and pitfalls of the drink, with or without monsters. Jon Wright’s feature filmography includes Tormented in 2009 and his new film Howl, scheduled for a 2013 release.