For the whole drunk family: GRABBERS (2012)

Ah laddies and lassies faire, are you going to be home with the folks, or someone else's? Will they be looking to you, the film guy or girl, to pick a film of Netflix once all the football and parades and food is done, and the young (under-7) children and pious old folks are safe in bed, and only the serious drinkers left coherent (read "serious" in that beautiful accent Claire Florani uses in those "All Hail the Drinkin' Man" commercials for Johnny Walker Black, the only reason to watch TV anymore - my praise here)?

Well, of course I got you covered. I had to keep my dad and brother stocked far into the night once upon a time, so I know the needed ingredients, such as fast pace, cheap shocks, fun attitude and no dull moments. You know, the type of stuff to keep them awake, and wherein if they drift off they can snap back because of an ensuing loud noise or mention of cocaine.

PS - These are all in linear order of drunkenness... so if you watch all ten in a row you may not understand what's going on by the end, aye, wait and grandmom will be up and about and giving you evil glances, aye, but there'll be enough strange violence to have ye covered.

(11/25) - Shoot - No time for ten
(11/27) - No time for two even... just...


GRABBERS (2012)
***1/3
It's an Irish horror-monster-comedy hybrid, a kind of LOCAL HERO / TIGHT LITTLE ISLAND / I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING bit of island whimsy. Drunker family members might scoff in the first bits, but the scenery is gorgeous and the leads most attractive and there's a great hook: the sea monsters that attack residents can't digest alcohol, 'tis toxic to their strange systems. So to avoid being eaten all the residents must drink, a lot. 

Dig that caption!

Dig that H.R. Giger-esque but not too much industrio-tentacledness

There's an adorable little lady tea-totaler ball-busting cop (Ruth Bradley), similar to how Holly Hunter used to be, pre-PIANO, but cuter even, and it's a rewarding watching her character get drunk for the first time, like a little two-fisted Gallic faerie, falling for the officer who decides to stay relatively sober just this once, even though it means having to stall the first kiss with this firebrand. Bradley is a wet-eyed mussy haired miracle in a big jeep stakeout, which is also craftily lit to make every rain drop in the deluge glisten with pregnant menace and/or romance. There's some taking time to capture lovely sunsets and the stark treeless beauty of the coastline. There's perhaps a few too many green and azure filters, overdoing it just a dram like we're watching the film through green sunglasses. But the whole third act is over one long night, filters gone, so 'tis no burden. And like all my favorite films, it ends at dawn.


AGE GROUPS: Unlike most monster films, the American ones for example, there's no guns on the island, so when monsters come they have to improvise with various devices of a non gunpowder-related nature. There's a knowing way of indulging and subverting monster movie cliches at the same time. Violence is mostly of the squishing and severed head variety, nothing the hip kids haven't seen in frog-cutting class, nothing sexual or traumatizing. And even old grandma can respect the chaste Fordian romance and Emerald hue.