Unnatural

source: Unnatural

Every winter I gather together some christmas/winter/snow themed horror flicks to watch. "Unnatural" had been on my radar for the 3rd winter already, so I finally watched it. Now I don't understand how could I think that there was something good behind the bad ratings & unpopularity. I'd like to note that I do enjoy a good b-horror flick, practical fx creatures features & all that stuff, but "Unnatural" falls below many b-horror movie standarts. "Unnatural" a.k.a. "Maneater" is an utterly bad and cringy piece of horror. I'm guessing they spent all the money on James Remar, because this was cheap as hell. James did not save anything trying to act out an underdeveloped, badly written main character. Firstly, the story can be told in one sentence, it generates literally no interest in the viewer and has a very high predictability factor. Secondly, do not expect great gore, action or dope looking killer bear - "Unnatural" is seriously lacking all of those things. You're gonna get a shady looking bear that you can see maybe 3 minutes in total & a few dark, shaky & blurry action sequences. There's also the awesome snowy setting of which's potential the filmmakers used about 5%. Even the things that cost nothing were not used efficiently. The characters were probably the worst. Annoying, unrealistic, cringe-worthy writing. "Maneater" is 80 minutes of pure boredom that can maybe be saved by a few beers & a friend or two. I'm giving it a well deserved 2/10 & that's only because of James Remar and his bear killing tactics.

This was a thoroughly disappointing, drawn out movie, with a very poor script that made it arduous to watch. It had the potential to be so much better but just kept falling flat at every available 'twist and turn' and apart from a few good scenes and some remotely okay acting it just appeared to become a bit cliché and lacklustre. Shame as it had the potential to be so much more.

While "Unnatural" was every bit as generic and stereotypical as these types of movies go, then it should be said that writers Arch Stanton and Ron Carlson actually managed to put together an entertaining man-eater feature. The creature itself had some interesting aspects to it, but it was painstakingly clear that they had not blown their entire budget on the creature effects. The storyline was straight to the point, albeit very predictable. And that fact was working against the overall enjoyment of the movie, of course. They had some interesting enough names on the cast list to spice up the movie, such as James Remar and Sherilynn Fenn. "Unnatural" is not the most innovative of movies, but still worth a watch if you got some time to kill - pardon the pun.

This one has some scientists making hybrid creatures by messing around with DNA and some gene splicing. They create a polar bear from hell that ends up escaping the facility. Being in Alaska you would think they were all alone, but not far from there a swimsuit shoot is taking place in the snow. All the crew involved slowly become eats for the bear. This wasn't good at all. They didn't know how to create tension or even how to keep us engaged. No CGI was used but the bear looks fake when you do see it. I was surprised to see Graham Greene in a creature feature but he was only in it for a few minutes. Even less screen time was Ray Wise. Sherilyn Fenn dominates the screen time and she looks puffier these days. The only thing unnatural is the way they put this film together. Avoid this one.

I felt embarrassed for the actors that have great reputations but still appear in absolutely horrendous movies like this. The acting, even by the few seasoned pros in the film, was awful. Stilted. Jarring even. The women used as boner-bait and the photographer (the actual producer of this stinker) were so bad that it gives the impression the movie was made just so the producer could take a vacation and take advantage of young actresses. They spent no time writing a story here. They seem to have a fifth grade understanding of what it's like to work in science, how those offices and labs function. That's at least understandable: some new writer having never been exposed to such things. But then they write a fashion photo shoot in the same infantile manner. Did this writer never see a photo shoot in their lives? You think it's two bikini clad women in sub freezing temps, a photog with no lighting, one small crappy reflector (they also refer to a light meter once, pretending it would be kept in the photographer's clothing suitcase inside the winter hat he's already been wearing), and an assistant that is abused by the photog. It seems like this area should be more well written. Photography is not far from videography. Were the crew laughing their bums off during that scene? The cartoonish villainy of the photographer/producer was also just stupid. There was nothing redeeming about this movie at all. Did they need a bad movie as some sort of write-off? Was there a mob debt involved? Get Shorty Season 2 brings us the making of Unnatural? I want to know the story behind this movie. Someone had to have been extorted. ETA: I just did a little more research on the writer "Arch Stanton". It's not a real person. It was a purportedly deceased character at the end of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. And the funny thing about that character name is that the character name was also a fake name. Another character, Blondie, made the name up to put on a grave marker. Does this mean the producer/writer/lead actor knew this was a really poor script so he put a fake name on it?

I kept watching it hoping it would get better but it didn't. The acting was average, apart from some decent scenes from Graham Greene and James Remar. The other actors are not very believable. There is not much depth in the story, it just expects you to put the pieces together. If you like some blood and gore, then you will get plenty but without much realism. The animatronics bear doesn't seem real, a bit like the shark in jaws..big but doesn't seem to move in the right way. If the writers had taken the time to show us more of the behind the scenes lab work that led up to the making of the bear and also taken time for us to get to know the characters, this may have worked better. Really don't waste your time with this one.

Unnatural,or Maneater which is the title I saw it under, is a fun nature-runs-amok horror movie. Some of the reviews here made this movie out to be a statement on the ecological effects of global warming. I completely disagree. Although the subject gets its mention, its pretty much isolated to the final reels of the film; the audience is not beaten over the head with it. Like cooking with bourbon, the alcohol is in there, but not anywhere near enough to get you drunk. This is not an ecological thriller. Its a killer bear movie. Although this film is not as effective as The Edge (probably the best movie dealing with a rampaging bear) or as the gore-soaked guilty pleasure Grizzly, its the better of the killer bear movies as of late. Thanks to the a great cast of character actors who play this story straight, truly gorgeous photography & a high body count, Unnatural is entertaining movie junk food. No heavy thinking required here. Just some horror movie-loving buddies who brought beer & wings.

Maybe if I'd never seen a movie before, this one would be worthy of more stars, but alas, I have. Having said that, now I will say even more! The bear! OMG...that sad sad sad bear! It would have been better if was made out of paper mache. Maybe I just gave some good advice for this film producer for future projects involving fake bears. I am a fan of James Remar, Gregory Cruz, Sherilyn Fenn, Graham Greene, and Ray Wise. They all gave great performances, but that didn't help this movie. They could have easily named this movie Polarbear!!!!!! Maybe with a few more or less exclamation marks. I'm not an expert on these sorts of things.

Okay, so this is my first review, sadly there's nothing much to say about this B-listed horror flick. You'll most likely recognize some faces in this one, especially James Remar. Actually that's all I have to say about the cast, you might know them from TV series and go: "Hey , I know that guy!". The acting is not there at all, the writing is horrible and so is Hank Braxtan. The location is amazing but sadly not exploited enough.I would have liked to see more wide shots of the beautiful Alaskan wilderness. I did 'enjoy' however that they didn't go for CGI when making the bear, or wolf-seal-bear, whatever that thing was... well, they tried. The script annoyed me a bit, as the two characters i liked either got mauled pretty quickly or weren't the person I imagined them to be. Overall a mix between goofy script(God, I hope it was on purpose), sub-par acting and poor directing choices. Don't watch this unless you really have nothing else better to do, go check out Frozen, Backcountry, The thing, The Grey etc. not this BS.