Review: Grizzly Park (2008)

Grizzly Park (2008)
Director: Tom Skull
Stars: Glenn Morshower, Randy Wayne and Zulay Henao

Our movie starts off with a scripture quote from the Bible. The verse is from 2nd Kings and to paraphrase, describes one of Gods main men Elisha. Elisha is making his way up a mountain when to young lads make fun of the fact that he’s bald. Elisha curses them in the name of God, soon after two female bears emerge from the forest and shred the two kids and 40 of their friends around the same age.

I guess this is a parable that you shouldn’t make fun of bald Bible readers, or something like that.

Anyway, I thought it was a little weird at first considering I thought this was a straight Bear attack movie in the same vein as “Grizzly Rage” or the wonderfully crazy “Claws.” I was wrong, the movie was in fact a retailing of sorts of that scripture.

A group of Juvenile punks all on probation for heinous crimes they all seem indifferent to are on a work release program where they will spend a week in the deep woods of Grizzly Park picking up trash along the walking trails.

The plot starts off interestingly enough with a psycho escaped convict posing as the correctional officer who will oversee the kids on their trash detail.

This character doesn’t last long and is one of the first to get attacked by the killer grizzly. During the attack not a lot is shown but implied instead through the use of typical animal attack editing, though there is a surprise scene at the end of the attack where the convict gets his face bit off by the bear.

From here on out we learn more about the juveniles and find more reasons not to like them, one by one the teens are punished for their crimes by way of animal attacks.

I can’t find much information on writer/director Tom Skull, Grizzly Park is the only entry on IMDB under that name. I’m guessing this is the work of a director working under a pseudonym. The reason behind my thinking is this looks a little too slick to be a freshman effort.

Regardless I’m on the fence about this one. I’ve seen much worse in the world of animal attack movies but that’s not saying a whole lot. It’s not as good as Grizzly Rage but deserves a watch if you’re in that “killer bear” type mood.