Disclaimer: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own.
SNATCHERS (2019)
Label: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 97 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen
Director: Stephen Cedars & Benji Kleiman
Cast: Mary Nepi, Gabrielle Elyse, J.J Nolan, Austin Fryberge, Nick Gomez, Rich Fulcher
In the alien horror-comedy Snatchers (2019) seventeen year old highschooler Sara (Mary Nepi) is hot for her dipshit ex Skylar (Austin Fryberger) who has just returned from a vacation in Mexico. She decides to give up her virginity to him and during the ensuing sex encounter things get strange when he seems to have a very painful orgasm, becoming so distracted that he forgets to pull-out, filling her with his baby-batter. The next day Sarah has morning sickness and pukes in the hallway, the following day she awakens to a baby-mound that seems like she's nine months pregnant already, but how can this be?
Trying to hide the pregnancy from her mom and friends at school she resorts to approaching her former best friend, Hayley (Gabrielle Elyse), who she abandoned for the greener pastures of popularity with the mean-girls. After pointing out what a shitty friend she is Hayley reluctantly takes her to the free clinic where the teen pregnancy nightmare
takes another not-normal turn, beginning
with a strange image that shows up on the ultrasound, and then when she begins going into labor on the examination table the "vag-cannon" birth decapitates the attending physician, revealing the deadly insectoid alien that has been gestating inside of her!
I was not expecting this to be so dang fun, the highschool humor is solid, peppered with teen slang that oldies like myself might find a bit annoying, but I just went with it, it has a Heathers sort vibe about it. It's not super-scary by any means, but the comedy is gold and the delightful gore-gags are fantastic, with not one but two aliens babies, it turns out she's carrying twins, and the second one might be the key to the destruction of all humanity.
The question of how did all this happen anyway goes back to her ex's trip down to Mexico and some big-dick Mayan artifacts he fucked around with. The opening Mayan illustration credit montage sets-up the film quite nicely if you're paying attention them, which I was not the first time around, but even if you don't the film fills in the holes pretty decently.
The first alien is referred to as a lobster at some point, which is not too far off the mark, looking a bit like an arachnid-crustacean with a stinger tail which it stabs into the brain-stems of people to control them. The second alien is larger and the design brought to the intergalactic cockroach from Men In Black (1997). It looks like a lot of these alien effects were done practically, which is very cool, it while it looks a bit low-budget in spots overall I thought they looked terrific.
The cast in uniformly fun, Mary Nepi and Gabrielle Elyse are totally believable as former besties brought back together by an alien teen-pregnancy nightmare, and Austin Fryberger is a lot of laughs as the horn-dog dipshit of an ex. The group of mean-girls is headed by Ashley Argota, who is mean-girl perfection as the bitchy ringleader. J.J. Nolan is also solid as Sarah's concerned
mother who gets caught up in the alien shenanigans. Also be on the look out for a delightful appearance from Rich Fulcher (Snuffbox) as a dickless veterinarian who sets up an impromptu wood-chipper abortion machine in a barn at one point.
Audio/Video: Snatchers (2018) arrives on Blu-ray framed 2.39:1 widescreen, it's a solid-looking digital shot film, colors looks accurate and well-saturated, with adequate black levels throughout. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with optional English subtitles.
Extras include a high-spirited 14-min making of featurette, 4-min of bloopers, plus an audio commentary from directors/writers Stephen Cedars, Benji Kleiman, and writer Scott Yacyshyn. The 2-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork, the same artwork on the wrap is featured on the slipcase. There's no artwork on either disc, black background and silver lettering, there's also a DVD with the same extras and feature, plus a digital copy of the film.
All the extras highlight how much fun the cast and crew had making this film, but something not discussed is how the film began life as web-series for phone carrier Verizon's defunct Go90 streaming app, which I thought was a bit strange, surely there's a story there. I believe the film is made of the same footage for the webisodes with some additional FX and/or content but I am not one-hundred percent sure on that, but all the footage and trailers I've seen for the web series looks identical to what I saw here.
Special Features:
- The Birth of Snatchers: A Behind-the-Scenes Look (14 min)
- Unexpected: The Snatchers Blooper Reel (4 min)
- Commentary featuring Directors and Writers Stephen Cedars, Benji Kleiman, and Writer Scott Yacyshyn
- Trailers (3 min)
Snatchers (2019) is a scrappy, highschool horror-comedy with killer aliens, think of something along the lines of Xtro (1982) or Insemenoid (1981), but set in highschool and a lot more humorous. This comes highly recommended, I had terrific fun watching it, a real gem of horror-comedy that I think might be flying under the radar of some folks, don't miss out.
