The Grey

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Should you rent it?

Hell NO.

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Spoiler free review.

This is where I totally disagree with Movie Bob. In his review he speaks wonders of this movie. For this  reason, I rented it as soon as it was available in Blockbuster (a couple of days ago). But as I watched it, I couldn't help but wondering if I remembered wrong about Bob giving it a good review because for me is one of the worst movies I've seen lately!

The thing about me is that I like to get into a movie and live it, so I hate when movies remind me (by bad acting, forced scenes, breaking the laws of physics, etc) that it's just a movie. When a victim in a horror movie acts in a stupid horror-movie-cliche way it takes me out of the character and I stop being afraid.

The Gray is about tough guys after a crash accident in the middle of nowhere. The toughest of them is Liam Neeson. And we can all agree that Neeson can play bad-ass characters (e.g. Zeus, Aslan, Qui-Gon Jinn, etc).

And who doesn't love survival movies with a though guy? I love them for sure.

The problem is that it never makes any sense. Specially since the villains are wolves. As soon as you see the clearly-computer-generated wolves behaving like monsters instead of wolves you can't enjoy the movie. Wolves would never behave in the way they do in this movie. I won't tell you what they do in it because I don't spoil even bad movies. But there's not one scene with a wolf or more in it that makes any sense. The wolves are even way bigger than they really are with no explanation.


So I tried to get passed that and assumed they were some kind of different monsters that the movie just failed to explain about and try to enjoy as a pure action/horror/survival/badass film. Still, I couldn't enjoy it.


The human characters are forced and stupid. They are not developed. Even Liam's character is supposed to have some important past that, when revealed, it's not shocking or even important to the story as I believe the director intended to be. 


And as if that was not enough, there was not survival guide either! Liam starts running the show but does nothing useful! Well, a thing or two, but not enough to really survive in a real-not-movie-set environment. You won't learn a thing about survival in this movie.


So better go rent Alive if you haven't seen that one.


I really hated this movie and it could have been a great one. I can't still believe the good score in IMDB and Bob's review. Just can't. If you see it, it's probably a good thermometer to learn if you have similar taste to mine.

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Spoilerish review.

There's still one way to have SOME fun with this movie... Show/Hide the rest of the spoilerish review

...see, as you'll probably guess really early into the film (if you see it), a lot of the guys will die. And they will die one by one (believe me: no big spoiler there). The only fun you can get out of this movie is by trying to guess:

1) Who will be alive at the end of the movie.
2) Who will die next (as someone dies).

Actually it would be a great betting game.

I won't give you an example of un-wolf-like behavior but I'll give you an example of how useless Liam was... there is a scene where someone is stuck in a river and about to drawn. Liam does 1 smart thing to keep him alive but never tries to help him get un-stuck!

And then you don't get to learn how to survive after being wet in a -10 degrees weather... it seems you just get out of the water and survive as if it was the beach!

Save your money...

Oh, and if you have seen it, you probably didn't stay through the credits (I know I didn't) and you missed a bit more of the ending. No surprise there. We all knew it was going to be a good fight... so what?