Claw

I expected another cruddy creature feature and was pleasantly surprised with this movie. The acting was very good. The CG was pretty good and all in all it was a fun watch.

There was a couple of minutes right before the end that I thought was not funny at all. Thankfully it did not end on that.

Apart from that one bit, very, very watchable.

Good fun.

This is a nice little comedy. It ain't King Lear. It ain't Gone With The Wind. It's a small fun movie, designed to make you smile and laugh and get some cheap flash scares on the way. The acting is just fine, in fact very good for this movie genre.

When you have some time and need to decompress, start this one and see how you like it.

The title CLAW is a synecdoche (a part which represents a whole, just as in JAWS (1975) the title actually refers to a shark). It refers to a prehistoric monster that was genetically re-engineered by a renegade scientist and ends up, for much of the duration of the movie, chasing a pair of comedians who made an involuntary stop at a desert ghost town.

This is brainless but fun entertainment for the right crowd. It takes neither science nor logic nor itself seriously, but that is okay because it is not meant to be a dissertation (a propos dissertation: the monster is referred to as a "raptor", short for "velociraptor", but that is actually a misidentification: none other than Michael Crichton, the author of JURASSIC PARK (1993), started a trend of giving this dinosaur which is closest to the ferocious Deinonychus the name of a Turkey-sized dinosaur, probably because it sounded cooler. Incidentally, whereas "velociraptor" means "swift robber", Deinonychus means "terrible claw"! Oh well).

I am part of the right audience because I like both movies in which people are chased by a monster (some comps I recently saw and liked: HOOKED UP (2013), where two people are chased by a ghost and DASHCAM (2021), where two people are chased by a flying zombie) and I like movies which have a ghost town as a background setting (a recent example: A TOWN FULL OF GHOSTS (2022)).

I am a very analytic person (see writing sample above) but it is good to every once a while let go and just let a silly movie be, as long as it hits the right entertainment notes, and this one does for me, mostly.

The CGI and acting are not top notch but adequate and the progression of events is entertaining, though I would have wished for a little faster pace. The music makes this film stand out from comparable low budget fare: the score is orchestral and gives the movie a little bit of a retro feel.

The ending overdoes the silliness a bit, and the 14-minute slo-mo end credits for this 80 minute movie must be some sort of an inside joke, but overall, it was not bad for a little over an hour entertainment. That is, if you like a movie that is just showing some people being chased by a monster against an unusual setting.

With a couple of good actors this could be an ok movie.

I give it 4 stars for the good CGI and the good acting of the girl. The acting of all the other characters was really bad. The plot is non-existent. I mean, the preview tells you literally what it is about: two people get chased around by a raptor for an hour and half. No backstory, no drama, no complexity, and the attempts at humor were pretty bad. Sorry to the people who made it, as I know you put your heart into it, but I just did not find it to be a good movie (the girl's good acting aside).