Director: William Girdler
Year: 1977
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Something is Out There
Genre: Nature-Run-Amok
Plot:
Taking a routine hike into the woods, a hiking expedition finds itself stranded on a mountaintop when an ecological warning preventing others from venturing out is announced, bringing them into contact with a swarm of vicious animals as they make their way back to civilization and safety.
Review:
This was an enjoyable if somewhat underwhelming genre effort. One of the more likable features here is the engaging setup that provides not only the kind of logical reasoning for the expedition but also a topical one for the time period. With scientific exploits just being introduced to the public shortly before this came out, the idea of what’s going on provides a rationale that ties directly into genuine ecological concerns of the day, while acknowledging the general inability to know more than they can. This all comes off quite naturally and is given just enough internal logic to make sense while doing enough service to the public at large that its message isn’t heavy-handed or aggravating.
That setup turns this into some genuine fun when it starts to provide a fun slew of animal attacks and encounters. This is based much more on the frequency of the attacks, as they’re quite nicely spread throughout the film, as the film makes it obvious that the animals are following them the entire time, with the eagle taking the excursion with them and signaling the others to attack, which makes for a fun time with the vultures, mountain lions, coyotes, and bears all getting spotlight encounters. These are played seriously enough that they’re quite threatening while also highlighting the cheesiness present in some of the situations, as what goes on here is ripe with overt silliness, including one of the more memorable encounters in the genre, which gives this a lot to like about it.
There are some slight problems to be had with this one. Among its problems is the strangely unnatural response to the animal attacks being against their normal behavior until quite late in the film. While it is normal to assume isolated incidents are the culprit at first, the fact that it continues to be assumed that way despite a few encounters having gone down, and one such encounter resulting in injury, results in very little urgency or recognition of the situation. Not being able to bring themselves to realize the obvious truth of what’s going on, as there are several bits to the contrary to prove everything is happening that way, makes them quite hard to get behind as a result.
The other issue with this one is the rather odd structure present in the film, where it tends to go through long stretches of time without the animals attacking, only to then break into brief spurts of attacks to move them to a new territory. This gives it the appearance of the group constantly being attacked as the film stretches out these encounters by offering either long-winded speeches about their personal lives or unnecessary antics about the alpha-male leadership quality that all means there’s less time for the animals attacking. Some of this causes the film to run on far longer than it should for no reason, and all of these factors combine to end up holding this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A slightly underwhelming, if still enjoyable, genre outing, this one manages to get a lot of positive features about it that keep it entertaining enough despite those drawbacks keeping it down. Those who appreciate this type of nature-run-amok creature feature or the overall style of the time period will have the most to like here, while those who don’t find themselves enjoying this kind of approach should heed caution with this one.
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