**Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided us with a free copy of the Blu-ray. We reviewed in this blog. The opinions we share are ours.
Horror/comedy is a hard thing to pull off, but Snatchers takes a pretty good crack at it with a funny, fast goofy and gross take on teen pregnancy and monster-mayhem. You could do way worse.
When it comes to horror/comedies, many have tried and many have failed; after decades of earnest attempts, you can still count the number of really fun and funny ones on the fingers of one hand beginning with Gremlins and Shaun of the Dead and ending, maybe, with What We Do in the Shadows. Snatchers (not to be confused with Grabbers, which is actually pretty good, too) may not be one of the top five, but it does a pretty good job at mixing monsters, high school, and really bad sex into a dizzying deep dish of blood-and-guts.
Mary Nepi, with huge eyes and flawless deadpan delivery, and Gabrielle Elyse, who raises truth-telling and horn rims to high art, are the two teens who steal the show, almost in spite of the crazy-ass plot. We begin with Sara (Nepi), eager to gain social acceptance and lose her virginity, as she ditches her bestie Haley (Elyse) and loses her virginity to her boyfriend, an absolute moron who just got back from a vacation in deepest, darkest Mexico with a monkey on his back. Or in his scrotum. Their first time seems a little…odd?…especially when she wakes up the next morning already hugely pregnant, and gives birth before the end of the day to a thing–not a baby–that looks like a bug made out of skin and teeth and just loves to kill things. People, mostly. After that, things get really weird.
You’ll see shades of The Faculty and bits of Shaun here, as well as a grimmer Gremlins in the creature design. You’ll also see lots of chases and hand-to-hand battles that are pretty well done, especially considering the budget, along with lots of blood, and some very sharp dialogue. Mary Nepi may have the biggest eyes in all of Hollywood, and Elyse the best hair, and both girls navigate some tough scenes, see-sawing from absurdity to actual emotion with a confidence that far exceeds their experience. It’s hard to believe this flawed little gem began as a web series; about a quarter of this film re-purposes footage from the web and smoothly integrated into full-on feature film.
The plot doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but then it doesn’t have to. And some of the cultural references probably won’t survive the test of time even measured in months. But if you’re looking for something that’s fun, funny, and just a little bit horrific, you could do a whole lot worse on some random Saturday night than lying back, cracking a Zima or two (do they still make Zima?), and just letting the crazy flow right over you.
Snatchers also stars J.J Nolan as Kate, Nick Gomez as Oscar, and Rich Fulcher as Dave. Written by Stephen Cedars, Benji Kleiman, and Scott Yacyshyn and directed by Cedars and Kleiman. — B.M.
