It’s so common a trope that there’s got to be a name for it. A monster appears / arrives in a small isolated community. A few strange things happen, and then some people disappear. A few people in the community investigate, and discover the monster. For some reason, authorities outside the community cannot come to the rescue. So it’s up to our heroes to figure out how to defeat it and rally the community for the fight.

Movies from The Blob to Tremors have used it, and even movies outside the “monster movie” genre (like Jaws and Halloween) use at least some of the parts.

Given how common it is, any movie that uses it should be judged not on how well it uses the trope, but on the strength of any other ideas or sub-plots that are used.

In the dark of night (is it ever during the light of day?), some sort of meteor crashes into the ocean near a small fishing boat. Thinking it might be a plane crash, the crew goes to investigate – only to be taken by something….something with very pointy tentacles….

So much for the pre-credits sequence, which tells us right away we’ve got a horror film on our hands.

The next day, we are introduced to our protagonists. Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) is only circumstantially “fresh off the boat”; she’s arrived at our island location via ferry. A police officer (or “Garda”, to use the appropriate local term), she’s being temporarily posted there to be the second officer at the police station while the chief is taking a well-deserved holiday. That partners her with Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle), who happens to be a world-weary functioning alcoholic. Well, we never see him totally blotto, but he’s always got a hip flask whenever he feels thirsty – which is quite often.

Despite the smallness of the island, word of the missing boat hasn’t spread. Perhaps it was based somewhere else. But when a bunch of dead pilot whales wind up on shore, with strange gashes in them, you’d think that would get some attention. Nope, not even when the guys with the construction equipment that come in to get the dead whales off the beach vanish does anyone take notice.

It’s only when Paddy Barrett, the town drunk (Lalor Roddy), brings in a “thing” that he found in one of his lobster traps and nearly killed him when it escaped does anyone wonder what the heck is going on. Luckily, there’s a marine biologist (Russel Tovey) with a modest lab on the island who can help clue them in.

Our two Garda start putting things together, and realize the creature – and others like it – are responsible for what’s been going on. The bad news is that there’s a big storm coming in, so outside help won’t arrive until the next day. The good news is that if Barrett survived an attack, perhaps everyone else can make it through the night. If only there were some clue, some hint, some difference with the “town drunk” that they could use to protect themselves…..

Grabbers does a couple of things right. The main creature is rarely seen in full light; most of what we get is tentacles. Our protagonists do NOT “meet cute”, unless you count her finding him sleeping it off in the Garda station’s only “cell”. While they do come to respect and understand each other a bit, there’s no romantic angle. She’s only there for two weeks. She does NOT “dry him out” completely – just getting him to understand that he doesn’t need to be constantly drowning his sorrows is enough. And he doesn’t convert her into a party animal; she’s an adult woman (and a Garda) who can handle herself. OK, they do kiss – once – so maybe they spend a little time together. But I can’t see them getting married.

Sometimes I find myself over-analyzing movies, looking for plot holes and other “questionable” things. In this case, where are any children? We see a few in the opening scene where they are presumably being sent away on the ferry for some reason – school, perhaps – but they are never mentioned at all. I’ve got to learn to let these sorts of things go. No one wants a movie to get bogged down in piddling little details.

Especially with such a pleasantly fun (and even scary in the right places) movie like Grabbers.