90 min Red Box: "Snatchers" - Diablo Cody with a "Gremlins" Twist

*Blog entry started on March 16, 2020.

And now the virus has left us without any opportunities for fun. That is a bit of hyperbole of course. With 14 video game libraries, two streaming devises, a region-free DVD player, a UHD Blu-ray player, and a VCR, there are plenty of means to have fun in my living room.

Provided you can deal with the company of a hard-to-read former better quarter. (Eva the Cat will always get half). Ironically, I think I have become the cat in the relationship. She just loves having living things around her. If they do not come up to her for pets and snuggling, their activities do not matter to her. Perhaps I should find a dead mouse to tell her to get involved with the environment. At least that will provide me with a chance to get in trouble, if only for a few minutes.

Thank the gods the liquor stores are still open. That may be able to numb the loneliness further enhanced by my ex's nature. Then again, I might just go on a seeming endless YouTube dive as I wait for her to go to bed like she says she will. She was nearly asleep by the end of the "Westworld" season premiere, but the lights go on, and her crafting catalogues are then opened. If you are just bored, let me know. I want to get to bed at a decent hour, so I will be more than happy to move to another room to watch the pregnancy-horror comedy that I suspect you will lack the stomach for. Fifty five cents is all I want to give Red Box at a time.

Snatchers - Overly Clever Title and Story

Sara seems to have everything going for her way to start her junior year of high school. Being in the popular clique has secured that. It only cost her relationship with her mom and best friend Haley. The only thing that could make things better was if her ex-boyfriend Skyler would take her back, but since he returned from a trip to the Mayan settlements in Mexico, sex is the only thing on his mind. If she was willing to alienate those closest to her for status, why hold on to virginity?

Skyler is not exactly bright enough to be ready with protection, but if anything unplanned for occurred, Sara will have at least a couple months to deal with it. After morning sickness and mood swings the next day at school, she suspects something is wrong. 24 hours later, she is nine months pregnant. Being the daughter of a teen pregnancy, she cannot let her mom find out. Her boyfriend is a little too dim and way too horny to turn to. Her clique status will be lost if they find out. Only Haley has enough concern for her to be trusted with this problem.

This problem escalates when Sara gives such an explosive birth that it immediately kills the OBGYN who was prepped for the delivery. The two escape the monster at the free clinic, but it appears that there is another fetus in Sarah. Our protagonist cannot wait in the pelvic exam position by a blender all night to solve this dilemma, so they decide to seek out a veterinarian to help them out. But the little alien's ability to hijack human host bodies and Skyler prepping to attend the big welcome back house party. Can two teenage girls stop what they surmise to be the end times the Mayan's promised?

"Snatchers" is a fun take on eighties horror tropes that only suffers from the current social restrictions on horror. These prevent the feature from being the chaotic and unapologetic comedy that its inspirations were allowed to be. I mean, why can we not hilariously kill douchebag popular kids like we use to?

The structure of the story requires too many acts. Once the creature is presented, we should focus on the hilarious means of battling it and have a more immediate method to multiply it. In the end, the film barely qualifies for pluralization in the title. Act two's first half is fun as the girls work on preventing the spread of the monsters, but the chaos from the second inciting incident is lost. If you were going to focus so much on the science of the fiction, perhaps introducing immediate horror is ill advised.

Focusing on the dealing with the unplanned pregnancy makes for an entirely different movie. The dialogue and performances are solid, but once we get the monster, we want to see the monster. So until we get to the climax after the creatures are reintroduced, the picture drags. There has to be a way to have both a tale of a strained sisterhood and a monster movie with strong special and gore effects at the same time. With "Snatchers" implying there will be a sequel, I hope there is a chance that we will get to see it.

"Snatchers" is only a few tweaks away from being a classic horror comedy, so watching the second act will be a bit frustrating. When the feature commits to laughs and gores, it makes the annoyances worth it. Olde Money Boyz (Directors/writers Stephen Cedars, Benji Kleiman and writer Scott Yacyshin) prove they are up-and-coming auteurs in the genre and it will be fun to see what they come up with next. Lets just hope they take the critiques from their 100% on the Tomatometer seriously.

IMDb: Snatchers (2019)