Scott Hardie: “It was ok.”
This was disappointing. The buzz around this movie was bad-but-fun, and unfortunately it turned out merely to be bad. Camp is really difficult to achieve on purpose; Larry Blamire attempted to make an entire directorial career out of it and only pulled off one decent title. Seeing thinly-sketched characters suffer horrific fates is unpleasant on multiple levels; the movie being in on the joke that it's bad is scarcely an improvement. It was especially hard to watch Ray Liotta suffer the most graphic death in the film, since he died while it was in post-production; they couldn't cut down on the viscera in his death scene out of respect? (Goodness, maybe they did.) I'm going to give this some credit for an impressively articulated and detailed CGI bear, and for the bemusement of some of the cast members who find ways to enjoy themselves in spite of the mess they're in, but I can't recommend it.
If they must make a sequel, I would not object to the premise being that it's set in the present day, and that the events of this film in 1985 inspired a hard-to-believe Internet meme, and that independent filmmakers are now trying to make a documentary about the meme, and they find themselves falling victims to a new bear that some other meme-inspired pranksters have deliberately served cocaine as a joke. In other words, if the movie can't pull off camp, maybe it can pull off meta; that's a lower bar.This review contains spoilers. Reveal it.
− September 10, 2023 • more by Scott • log in or create an account to reply
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