Grizzly Rage

Grizzly Rage (2007)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Incredibly stupid and rather boring "nature attacks" film has four teenagers deciding to go off roading for some weekend fun. Like idiots they decide to go through a gate warning them not to go any further but they want to have some fun. Soon the laughs turn to sadness as they accidentally kill a bear cub and soon it's large mother comes for revenge. There's really not too many good things going for this film, which runs out of ideas around the fifteen-minute mark and then we're left with one bad or boring event after another. I think the worst thing is that this film starts off so poorly that you can't help but hate the four people simply because of how annoying they are. You hate them so much for being so stupid and then they end up killing a baby bear and in all honesty I doubt many people are going to feel sorry for them once mommy comes. I think a lot of people are going to be cheering for the bear but the screenplay then adds dumb scenes like the group crying and wondering what they did to deserve the bear attacks. Well, duh, you were acting stupid and killed her child. The screenplay never seems to have any idea of what it wants to do because we're given so many scenes where nothing happens or the characters end up talking about things that either make no sense or you have to wonder why they're even talking about them since they're all about to get eaten. The bear attacks aren't the greatest in the world but they're serviceable. I think the best thing that can be said is that they use a real bear so it's none of that CGI madness. There are a couple shots that are obviously fake including one rather funny sequence where the bear uses its head to try and push the jeep off a cliff. The performances are pretty much what you'd expect from a film like this but the screenplay does none of them any justice. GRIZZLY RAGE isn't the worst film ever made but you should still pretty much skip it and just check out the must better GRIZZLY.

I desperately try to not watch one single David DeCoteau movie every year, yet for some reason I always seem to end up watching one of them every single year. This has been going on for some years now. I have no explanation for this phenomenon.

So what about GRIZZLY RAGE? Well, the bear was good, wasn't he? The bear was a beautiful specimen. The bear was nice. Watch him roar. Watch him run. Watch him do not much else, really. I have no idea where DeCoteau got the bear footage from, as it was obviously shot on another day, somewhere else and with none of the actors & crew around. That's called stock footage. And if not, then it's lousy film-making.

Once again, DeCoteau manages to poop out a movie that has absolutely nothing to offer. He gives us nothing but endlessly padded scenes with no content. Not a single remotely interesting thing is going on in this movie. Three guys and one girl in some woods with a bear out for revenge after them. Seriously, the bear wants revenge. Get even. Up close and personal. Why? Because the youngsters killed Mommy Bear's Baby Bear in a hit-and-run accident. And since Mommy Bear is a law-abiding specimen, she wants justice. So, in a way, this film is like DEATHWISH set in some forest and with a bear replacing Charles Bronson.

It might also be a spin on THE TOXIC AVENGER, as the bear apparently had been drinking water polluted by toxic waste. However, that part of the plot was completely lost on me, until I read about it in another user-comment on here. It made me remember there were indeed a few barrels of toxic waste in some shots. I think this film made me very stupid all of the sudden, because I completely failed to link those toxic waste barrels to the bear. And it didn't help things that the bear just looks plain normal. It's a big one. And a beautiful one. Yes. But normal and furry. No Mutant Bear Avenger. I want to re-watch PROPHECY now.

What about the killings? Well, we sometimes see a fake bear's claw hitting nothing but thin air really. And then an actor flies through the air. Then cut back to the bear going "rooaaarrr" and some CGI blood splatters on the camera-lens, and... that's it, basically. This stunt gets repeated a couple of times. Oh yes, something else: I wanted to see a crappy CGI bear and I didn't get any. Color me disappointed.

Another funny thing. Why on earth did that one actor have to run around through the woods at night in his underwear? Was it because he felt like Tarzan? Or did he feel like going back to nature to go barbaric on the bear's ass? No, of course not. He was starring in a David DeCoteau movie, and that requires any hot-looking male actor to take his cloths off at some point. He ran around in his underwear, climbed up a tree and just sat there for a while. Really a profound sequence that was.

What? There's no boobs in this movie? Now I'm getting mad.

Forgive me if I'm not even going into the movie's plot or other details. Other people have given it their best shot already on here. But I'd like to share one more thought about this film that involves a truly puzzling aspect. Have you ever noticed in certain movies (especially cheap B-horror movies) whenever there's supposed to be a storm going on outside, those light-guys are just a tad bit too eager to push the buttons on their strobe lighting effects? A 5-minutes-long scene might have for instance like 20 lightning flashes in it. While in real life, you're even lucky if you catch about two lightning flashes during a whole rainy night. Now DeCoteau really goes way beyond this. Not just a few steps too far, but so ridiculously beyond this, that he's just gone. The last 30 minutes or so of GRIZZLY RAGE take place at night, during a storm (they actually didn't have the budget to produce rain effects either, but whatever). Now, about every 3-5 seconds, those lightning strobe-effects come on. For about 30 minutes straight, relentless and persistent. You'll be flashed out of your mind, I tell you. Seriously, I'm pretty sure DeCoteau was not at all simulating a nightly storm. I'm convinced he wanted to show audiences he had a stroboscope on the set by simply making it part of the scenery. Part of the story even. Like, "Hey look, there's pulsating lights in the woods. They just grow there. Ain't that cool?".

Some movies just eat the cake, and GRIZZLY RAGE is one of them. Now, I could swear I will never watch a David DeCoteau movie again in my entire life. But chances are if someone would throw DEMON SPEED or LEECHES! at me, I'd just pop it in and watch it anyway. But not this year, I guarantee you. Next year, maybe.

I first saw Grizzly Rage, like so many other Big Creature Eating Attractive People films late one night on the Sci Fi channel with a large group of friends while the majority of us were downing sizable amounts of alcohol. As the sub-par Fast and the Furious style credits sequence shot past with a low rent nu-metal band playing in the background, I was still reasonably sober but could feel the effects of two purple nightmares (look them up) taking effect and knew that soon, I would be swimming in a haze of my own creation. For the sake of a cheap laugh or two, I found a pen and paper and wrote down all the things I learned from this movie. The results are as follows:

1. Bears pursue blood vendettas. 2. Americans graduate from high school at the average age of 24. 3. Bears can push land rovers over. 4. Being torn limb from limb by ferocious, man eating bears is nature's way of punishing you for minor traffic violations committed in your youth. 5. Girls tops can magically sew themselves back together after being ripped open. 6. Eating toxic waste makes bears bigger, stronger, more intelligent and far more bloodthirsty than average, rather than the predicted scientific outcome of causing malignant tumors and killing them. 7. Dressing like an extra from a Vanilla Ice video is no guarantee of survival. 8. You can get attacked by a bear, rolled off a cliff in a car, thrown spine first onto a bear trap and spend all day battling for survival on a sun parched strip of mid-western wilderness and still have better skin and hair than Andie McDowell. 9. Bears respond to sass. 10. Smashed land rovers will still run for miles if rolled down a small hill to gather momentum.

In other words folks, this is not great. In fact it's terrible. CGI blood, stock footage, awful characters and death scenes so pathetic they don't even make a group of five young men, drunk off their heads on aftershock concoctions laugh. Avoid.

This movie is brutal from start to finish. Obviously the writer/director don't necessarily believe in the old adage of "anything worth doing is worth doing well". The director has no knowledge of bear behavior or safety. Which you should have if your going to make a movie with a bear. First of all you cant just hide around a tree/corner from a bear, cause bear's have a keen sense of smell. Second, the amplified bear sounds and the shots of the bear at least initially were horrible. The night scenes...you cant hardly see anything, not to mention some of the other camera work. And the ending is brutal...well why would it be any different than the rest of the movie. I cant believe that this movie made it past the editing phase.

Saw this on cable and the information page said something about a "mutant bear", so immediately I knew I had to watch it. Turns out, no mutants, no over the top insane events, just a disappointing movie.

Featured and filmed in Manitoba, Canada (the scenery might be the best part of the film), four kids out of high school live it up as they go joyriding in the wilderness. When they run over a bear cub, things get hairy, as mama bear wants revenge! And of course, they HAVE to run into all sorts of additional car troubles and other hand-wringing episodes.

Overall, a trashy movie with terrible acting. Worth watching if you find bad movies hilarious. Kate Todd, young notable Canadian actor, is the only character that stands out...and only for her looks.