Although the main creature here turns out not to be from outer space, Snatchers is an entertaining comedy horror that has people being controlled by a parasitic entity looking to breed, and is very much a mixture of “The Puppet Masters” and raging teen hormones. It gets going quickly, and manages to keep energy levels high right up until the end credits roll.
Mary Nepi plays Sara, a young woman who feels pressured into having sex with her boyfriend, Skyler (Austin Fryberger). Not using any method of contraception is a big mistake though, as Sara ends up pregnant. Her pregnancy is obvious the next day, and her belly soon fills out to the size of someone who would be expecting to go into labour any day. While getting checked over, and enlisting the help of Hayley (Gabrielle Elyse), Sara gives birth to something that immediately starts destroying the surrounding room and people in it. It can latch on to people, controlling them and hopping from one body to another while dealing death to pretty much anyone who just happens to be nearby. Sara and Hayley try to figure out a plan of action, both helped and hindered by a local police officer, Oscar (Nick Gomez).
Expanding their short film, directors Stephen Cedars and Benjo Kleiman, with co-writer Scott Yacychyn, have really done their best to maximise the fun factor throughout, and are helped massively by allowing Nepi and Elyse to reprise the main roles (as they were also involved with the short). They have used practical effects well, especially in the realisation of the main beastie (great work by the special effects team) and the various gore gags spread sparingly throughout.
Nepi and Elyse are both very easy to root for, and their characters are given the kind of backstory you can find in any teen movie that features characters who used to be best friends before they grew apart, and they react well to the madness unfolding around them, perfectly moving from panic and fear to strength and determination in time for whatever final face-off is coming. Fryberger is enjoyably awful, having typical teen male inconsideration and horniness ramped up to eleven, and he steals one or two scenes at both the beginning and end of the film (especially in a flashback sequence that shows how a family holiday connects to the destruction and weirdness). Gomez is also good in his role, the kind of potential hero who may suffer serious injury, or even death, before being of any real assistance to those in peril.
Walking a fine line throughout, especially when this could have so easily been a teen sex comedy with only a pinch of horror and bloodshed to it, Cedars and Kleiman (and Yacychyn) deliver a bit of fun that a) feels indebted to a number of classics, and b) doesn’t outstay its welcome, with a runtime just over 90 minutes.
If you only see one horror comedy about a teenage girl who goes from not pregnant to fully ready to give birth in twenty four hours, and who then has to witness the thing that came out of her body whirling around and mortally wounding almost everyone around her, then I recommend this one. It may not be celebrated years down the line, but it’s an enjoyable bit of entertainment for an evening.
7/10
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