MOOSE (2015)

MOOSE (2015)

Tagline: The Herbivore Your Mother Warned You About!

In this one, the small town of Gangrene Gulch, Alaska (which is actually Wasilla, Alaska but that’s not important right now), a new Park Ranger named Zack played by Zack Lanphier takes his post with another ranger named Mike (played by Dave Nufer) who pretty much knows the ropes. It feels like Zack is going to leave about 20 times, just dealing with all the crazy quarks in town. He actually works next to a lady who suddenly falls asleep with a violent twitch and sends things like scissors flying across the room with frightening precision. He quickly ends up on the trail of a half-man half-moose killer. Yep, that is what’s going down here. Zack and Mike team up with this woman named Sam (played by Chantel Grover) who is the coroner’s assistant. Because you know… you have to have a least two people that know what’s up when you are hunting an ancient moose-themed force with the power to destroy everything in its path. 

I found myself laughing out loud at a lot of things in this movie just because I like quirky stuff like this. The chef for instance only uses puppets to deal with people and those puppets do multiple jobs. It’s really not meant to be taken with any kind of seriousness at all. I guess there are mild aspects of horror here, but what we end up getting is mostly a comedy. Admittedly this is not for everyone. I would imagine you would have to have some idea of how things are in the north or have lived in Alaska to catch most of what is going on, but a lot of it I think would be funny to anyone. 

How much you enjoy this movie is likely dependent on what you expected to see. The budget is somewhere between the 64K they got from Kickstarter and 100K. There are really no special effects whatsoever so the crew used what they had to make things work. One example is the ketchup and cherry juice mixed with dirt to create the blood effect. 

One thing that does look pretty great in this thing is pretty much any of the scenic shots and the filters used in putting together the final film. There is some great lighting stuff done where some scenes are shot against dark and light purples and others where the shots are given extremely vibrant tones. It’s almost got a comic book type of feel to it which I liked. It also turns out the writer does do a comic called “Tundra” so the look of this film in those sequences makes sense. The acting is not great by any means, but the films two leads are very likable which is a huge plus for me. I want to care about the main characters and I do.  

This one is kind of a victim of trying to cram too much random into a movie that would have been better if it was more straightforward while maintaining its comedy aspects. The ending is also a bit lacking. Overall I have to give this one a 3 out of 7. This one didn’t blow me away, there are a few things they could have done that I thought would have made me want to give this thing a 4, but I think 3 is fair.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF SONS OF WINTER PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.  

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