Bear

source: Bear

I laughed out loud many times while watching this movie. Unfortunately, it's not a comedy. No, Bear is a low-budget horror flick gone terribly, hilariously wrong. And it's the best kind of wrong, too. The sort that gets wronger and wronger as it goes along. This film starts out cheap looking but with a faint hint there might be something interesting in the offing. Then it slides into bad and keeps going into awful until about an hour in, it plunges to near Ed Woodian depths of suck. It's the sort of cinema suck where the filmmakers have absolutely no clue how horrible they are and the goofiest bits of addle-brained nonsense are allowed to play out on the screen. If these folks were trying to go for "so bad, it's good", I salute their accomplishment. If they weren't…I pity them. Giving credit where it's due, this is a great concept for a motion picture. Combine Open Water with Jaws, except it's set in the woods with a grizzly bear. Tell me that's not a brilliant bit of inspiration! Of course, whatever screenwriters Roel Reiné and Ethan Wiley did to come up with it must have blown out every synapse in their brains because everything after the concept is staggeringly poor. Well, not everything. Some of the camera work in Bear is, well, not good but it shows a few glimmers of talent. And I suppose the bear does an okay acting job. The rest? Hoo boy. Belittling older brother Sam (Patrick Scott Lewis), his nondescript wife Liz (Mary Alexandra Stiefvater), his family disappointment younger brother Nick (Brendan Michael Coughlin) and Nick's hippie skank girlfriend Christine (Katie Lowes) take a shortcut through the woods on the way to a party for Sam and Nick's parents. A flat tire sends them off the road and a bear wanders by, so Sam goes all Scarface on the bear and shoots it dead, blasting away even as it tries to lumber off. When the bear's angry mate arrives, Sam is out of bullets and the group has to take refuge in their broken down minivan and try to find a way to survive a 400 pound beast who's out for vengeance! So, I guess instead of Jaws this is more like Orca. Yeah, that's right. Orca. I'm not going to go into a lot of the details of where, how and why Bear stinks on ice. This thing really is so mirthfully ghastly that you've got to experience it for yourself. I will say that, while these filmmakers did use a trained grizzly for many scenes, they also extensively employ a guy in a bear suit. It's not a good bear suit, either. Have you ever seen those Bear City vignettes from Saturday Night Live? It's more like that kind of bear suit. There's also a point where the film turns into a episode of the Maury Povich show with the bear playing the part of Maury. I'm not kidding about that. This is one of the most difficult movies I've ever tried to evaluate. Bear is truly atrocious, but in an at times spectacularly entertaining fashion. I didn't enjoy it, but I enjoyed laughing at it. To be fair to other films, the quality here deserves two stars. I must bump it up to three, though, because I had a much better time watching this than any other two star flick I've suffered through.

I have never rated a movie with only one star, because its always something good in all the movies and no one deserve only one star, but this one star is for the bear in the movie, everything else is so bad! For a good movie you need good script, acting and director!Movies can be good if you have all of them together or at least some of that! But this movie does not have none of that.Plot is so shallow, acting even worst so the director!Camera is also very bad and the lighting...i don't understand where from all the light in this movie is coming from? Avoid this movie at any cost, go for a walk instead!Don't spend 90 minutes of your life for it!

Was it a blockbuster, no., but it wasn't bad at all. It depends on what kind of horror you enjoy, if it's jump scare and implausible events, and overdone predictable movies, this is not for you. If you, like me, are scared by things that could actually happen, and is pretty origional, then you should like it. I would ignore the bad reviews, this movie was not that bad.

I was sitting watching this, and when it was over with i was just saying: "What the F***?!". It was a shame. One bear against 4 people and it is smarter than all of them together. What happened to humanity? My math homework is more fun. Do i need to say more? If WWF, made this it would make more sense, but... No! Don't watch it unless you have No life, or you want a good laugh? I have also a suggestion for new title: The bear whisperer. Because both of the men know a lot about bears, especially the one with black hair. He loves bears. a lot.

OK...where do i begin. this is my first time on here. i had just watched this movie and i felt i had to say something about how terrible it was. when the movie ended i couldn't believe what in the hell i just watched. so i had to make an account to say this...first of all i thought the bear was the best actor in the movie. the others i thought were comical and were the worst actors ever...i love B horror movies and this one really took the cake, worst i have ever seen. love how the bear was almost like jason from Friday the 13th and he could show up any where at anytime. and what the hell was up with the ending the two brothers think they can take a bear by beating on him with a wooden guitar??? hahaha. i did get my laughs out of this tho...and the budget with this movie must of been rock bottom on the list. cuz there were so many flaws with the set and some dude being caught in the camera scene. my English teacher always said that i should reread my papers, and definitely the director did not do this. Bear is OK if you have nothing better to do and get a few laughs out.

If you managed to survive the really scary scene when the bear is terrorizing the gang by clawing through holes in the sewer pipe, pause the DVD at 38:31 and look in the upper left. You can see a dude wearing glasses, leaning on the pipe, wearing a bear paw glove! . . . I also found it interesting that the older brother was dragged back to the car from the steakhouse, yet was not in a state of shock. If that were me I don't think I'd be able to join in on the current discussion. The conversation between the younger bro and his sister-in-law was rather casual also, considering that the first girl was brutally mauled in their faces, and everyone seemed to completely forget about her. Definitely a 3 rating for humor on this one. It was very campy, I was reminded of Wendigo and had some really good laughs!

This is the worst movie I have ever seen in my life. That's saying something as I have actually spent time researching critics opinions and watching films that have received the title "Worst Move Ever." The writing, the situation, the acting, the production values, even the opening title sequence, begged me to turn off the movie. I knew right off the bat "Bear- Play Dead." Should have an element of camp. I was ready for a fun scary movie featuring an animal harassing and chewing down on some undeserving humans. How can you screw this up? People enter nature, nature is not as it seems, bad things happen. Simple enough right? Jaws, Grizzly, Piranha, great stuff. Cujo? YES! Bear- Play dead? Nope. From the obviously awful bear costume work, the ridiculous action movements, the terrible camera work. (I'm fairly certain I noticed the aperture of the camera being adjusted in one scene.) Awful editing for suspense, awful dialog. At one point I began wishing a Bear might enter my living room and show me how it's done. I would've welcomed that by the time the film was 20 minutes in. Production lights appear out of nowhere. Light shoots out from behind trees due to poor production techniques. Scenes shot during daylight are not effected properly to hide the sunlight. Every character is highly unlikeable. This in itself is not bad, but we are robbed due to the directors inability to film their demise. I couldn't help but think, "Man, I can't wait to see this people get eaten." However there is no pay off as the director was obviously not talented enough to pull off any of this detail. The only purpose for this film, God only knows how it got into the local Redbox, is for teachers in film school to illustrate failure. I found Warner Herzog's "Grizzly Man" a documentary about a man who loved bears, infinitely more terrifying than this horror film.

Let me begin by saying that this movie was obviously shot on a limited budget but this still could have been a cult classic. Let's start with the plot shall we: Two young couples get stranded in the middle of nowhere after having decided to take a shortcut (yes yes, very original). They quickly learn that they have just entered bear territory and soon they find themselves surrounded by hungry grizzly bears. Simple story indeed but just like I thought "Five Across The Eyes" succeeded in many ways, I really thought this would succeed in the exact same ways since it's shot in a similar style. Now the movie kicks off quite fast and keeps going at a rapid pace. The actors are surprisingly great and the panic feels real. You know what else is real? The bears! Not CGI-crap, these are actual bears... well for most of the time anyway. Every now and then we see a VERY fake-looking snout and the occasional friendly-looking cotton-paw with - what looks like - soft claws. Indeed they seem to have been using an over-sized teddy bear in quite a few scenes but the shots are so quick that it doesn't really do any harm to the movie. However, the thing that does harm the movie are all the obvious goofs in it. The movie takes place at night-time, yet some scenes are so OBVIOUSLY shot in the middle of the day that it doesn't even look as if they tried to cover this up. What's even worse is that we see the "fence" surrounding the area in several frames. There's even one point where we can see the boom operator clear as day (trust me, you can't miss it). What started off as a potentially awesome movie was soon dragged down by an amateurish crew and increasingly ridiculous dialogues. Still, if you're a fan of killer bears, I think it's worth checking out, it should've been a cult classic but will most likely end up in the bargain bin unless they do some serious changes and re-shoots for the American release (the DVD reviewed is the UK DVD - which by the way was bare-bones - no extras except for some trailers).

first off... this is a joke movie... reviewing "BEAR" without understanding this is a waste of everyone's time, you should have been laughing your glutes off... a joke people... and if you didn't get that... um.... yah... joke's on you I think.... oh man... this by the youtube author of "CARDBOARD WARFARE," "REAL LIFE MARIO CART," "RACIST CAT," and "JEDI A-HOLES" just to name a few. I am making this 10 lines now