Grizzly Park is an American horror film, released February 8, 2008. It was written and directed by Tom Skull.
Eight troubled young adults are inducted into a rehabilitation program: They will be sent to serve a week of community service for their respective misdemeanors at a national park dubbed Grizzly Park. Little do they know that the guy that should drive them there has been murdered and replaced by an escaped Serial Killer and rapist. And then everything gets a turn for the worse when another serial killer, this time of the Ursus arctos species, appears and decides to pick them for dinner one by one.
Not to be confused with Grizzly Rage, which amusingly, also features a killer bear.
Tropes associated with this work:
- All Animals Are Domesticated: The first thing Ranger Bob tells the group is that wild animals are not domesticated. A minute later, Bebe ignores it. The domesticated animal fallacy comes full circle in the end when it's revealed that the murdering bear was controlled by Ranger Bob the whole time.
- Always a Bigger Fish: Wolves? Serial killers? Nothing compared to a big, angry BEAR!
- Asshole Victim: Almost all of the deaths in the movie, save for the community service driver and Ranger Mike, are portrayed as either well deserved, or nobody who will be missed, in particular an escaped serial killer and rapist, an ephebophile, a gangster girl, a Neo-Nazi, a con man, and a woman who poisoned her own mother. Bebe, the final survivor, turns out to be faking her sweet act and contemplating Bob's murder before he kills her last.
- Bears Are Bad News: The bear is the biggest threat in the film.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Bebe spends the whole movie appearing as a girl who is so stupid that she can't tell a cat from a skunk, and is only there because a friend of hers let her leave a store with some unbought clothes as a joke. She seems like the only likable character in the movie... Then she locks Candy in a cabin for the bear to munch on and muses on whether she should kill Ranger Bob and blame it on the bear for fun.
- Black Dude Dies First: Technically not true. But he's still the first of the young adults to get hurt and the first to be killed by the bear.
- Blatant Lies: Scab the Neonazi allegedly only likes white people. Yet he makes advances towards the Latina Gang Banger Lola.
- Body Horror: The first evidence of the bear being around is half a woman's face on the forest floor.
- Brainless Beauty / Too Dumb to Live: Bebe. Revealed at the end to practice Obfuscating Stupidity.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Several instances:
- The kids aren't allowed to use cell phones in the first place.
- The only phone that works in the forest is Ty's satellite phone anyway, and he lends it to Candy before deciding to split the gang. This does not end well for him.
- The Serial Killer kills early the only other ranger in the park and breaks up the cabin's radio.
- Con Man: Ty tricked elderly people into giving away confidential information, and stole their medication.
- Deranged Park Ranger: Ranger Bob initially seems like a sarcastic survivalist watching over a group of delinquents. However, when he finds out that some of the delinquents under his supervision got away with crimes which are truly heinous, he demonstrates a Knight Templar side when he decides to set a grizzly bear on all of them.
- Eaten Alive: Kiki is eaten by some wolves. Pretty much everyone else is eaten by the bear.
- Fair Cop: Ranger Mike is an attractive park ranger.
- Family-Values Villain: Ranger Bob abhors swearing, has contempt for socially deviant behaviour, and wants to keep any social interactions between the delinquents as tame as possible, and when he realizes that not only are the delinquents guilty of worse than what they are being punished for, but that they lack remorse, he has no qualms about setting a bear loose to kill the lot of them.
- Final Girl: Bebe. She's ditzy bordering on childish, her crime of shoplifting is pretty light compared to the other teens, and she's the only one to try and form a friendship with Ranger Bob. Subverted. She does make it through the night, but only after sacrificing Candy. Then she brags about surviving over her cell phone and muses on whether she should kill Ranger Mike and make it look like the bear did it. Unfortunately for her, Ranger Bob overheard...
- Fun T-Shirt: Bebe shows up at the camp wearing a shirt that says "They're called ta-tas."
- Gorn: One character is ripped in half with their guts spilt out.
- Halfway Plot Switch: At first it looks like this is a slasher movie with a Serial Killer in the forest. Then 40 minutes in the bear appears.
- The Killer Becomes the Killed: The Serial Killer is the first victim of the bear.
- Knight Templar: Ranger Bob turns out to have a warped sense of justice which prompts him to set a bear on the delinquents he is supposed to supervise.
- Misplaced Wildlife:
- The movie takes place in California, but the beast in question is an Alaskan Kodiak bear. It's actually justified: It's said early on that the last grizzly in the park was killed in 1922, and the killer bear is revealed to be commanded by Ranger Bob in the end, who presumably brought it.
- Wolves were reintroduced in the park after extirpation. This is obviously based on the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone in 1995; no wolves had been released in California by 2008, but they started venturing on their own from Oregon in 2011.
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: Ranger Bob never drops his charade as a Park Ranger/Survivalist, nor does he ever let any of the delinquents catch on to his actions as a serial killer.
- Oh, Crap!: Any time someone sees the bear for the first time, they become petrified.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Ranger Bob is a serial killer by proxy who uses his pet bear to kill the wicked delinquents dropped off at the park, as well as the murderous Butch Latham.
- The Perfect Crime: All the young adults' deaths are blamed at the end on Serial Killer Butch Latham, who is thought to have escaped afterwards but in reality was killed and eaten the first by the bear, so even the bear is spared of any blame for the killings.
- Redemption Rejection: None of the delinquents try to rehabilitate themselves for their past misdeeds. Ranger Bob has the bear maul them in response.
- Saying Too Much: Yeah, everybody just left. Except me. And you, who are a Serial Killer. Why?
- Savage Wolves: Present in the park, they provide an additional threat to the bear and the human killers.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Ryan ended up in community service rather than in jail despite having sex with a minor and leaving her in a coma because his parents are loaded. Unfortunately for him, not even his rich parents can stop a bear from attacking him.
- Serial Killer:
- Butch Latham is an escaped serial killer and rapist who had previously raped and killed 12 offscreen, and kills 2 people onscreen.
- Ranger Bob is the mastermind behind the bear attacks.
- Spicy Latina: Lola is a hispanic woman with a sharp mouth and a fiery temper.
- Super-Persistent Predator: Subverted most of the time. It's said early that this is the time of the year when bears eat the most before going into hibernation, yet the bear only kills (and always eats) one person per night. Then in the final 20 minutes it enters the camp and kills everybody present non-stop but because it's controlled by Ranger Bob, who has decided that all the young delinquents deserve to die.
- Token Minority: Ty is the only African-American in the group, and Kiki is the only Asian.
- Token Minority Couple: Ty (Token Black) and Kiki (Token Asian) get close really fast but the critters don't give them a chance to get anywhere.
- Too Dumb to Live: Kiki and Ty ultimately die because they got lost after Ranger Bob told them not to leave the group.
- Treacherous Advisor: Ranger Bob is ultimately responsible for every death in the movie.
- Upper-Class Twit: Candy is a vapid, rude woman from a privileged background.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ranger Bob ends up arranging the deaths of the delinquents by bear out of a warped sense of justice when they refuse to rehabilitate themselves.
- Your Costume Needs Work: One of the victims is stoned when the bear attacks, and confuses it with a guy wearing a bear suit.
