Grizzly Park (2008)

"Eight young adults are sent to do community service at Grizzly Park. There, they are hunted by an escaped serial killer along with the animals of the forest."

Even though most people would say that this film is only made bearable (no pun intended) by Glenn Morshower's performance as Ranger Bob, I actually managed to switch my brain off enough to almost enjoy it. Admittedly Emily Foxler (as Bebe) was the only one of the actresses who kept my interest as none of the other characters were overly likable and the story itself wasn't at all as involving as it could have been.

I suppose "Grizzly Park" is a comedy. The IMDb describes it as such and there are far too many amusing moments for it to be a real horror movie. Whether any of that is intentional or not is another matter. I found it all very entertaining though and not just because I wanted to tear it apart for yet another movie review.

The main problem with "Grizzly Park" is that it was short on anything remotely horrific until the last twenty minutes or so. Until that point it could have been just another teenage soap opera like "Dawson's Creek" or something. When the horror did finally come it was all extremely fake looking but nicely violent. Really there needed to be some more kills spread out through the running time to keep things interesting rather than padding it out with two-dimensional characterisation, expositions and some pretty bad dialogue.

There were a couple of twists at the end which I didn't see coming at all. Perhaps if the "Sleepaway Camp" series that this was so obviously modelled on had been fresher in my mind then I might have realised what was going on sooner.

Although I don't recommend "Grizzly Park" for anybody sane to watch (especially as I'm not one of those people who believe that any film can be "so bad that it's good"), it certainly wasn't the worst horror-comedy that I've ever sat through.