Grizzly Night was on my radar, thinking that it could be a fun creature feature, and its appearance on Amazon Prime Video meant that I had a chance to see it. It turned out to be not what I expected and one of this year’s most pleasant surprises.
Burke Doeren’s movie depicts the real 1967 Glacier National Park tragedy when two unrelated fatal grizzly attacks occurred on the same night, a few miles apart. The real story element immediately gives this a more serious tone, as does the decision to eschew the use of CGI to depict the bears. Only footage of real grizzlies is used, so both the attacks happen off camera. Resultingly, this is more about the attempts to rescue those attacked and keep all the park visitors safe. That is very effectively done, with some very suspenseful scenes. The coda at the end also shows starkly that the awful killings did not end with the two people.
There are also a clutch of very good performances, probably more than you would expect in a low-budget, low-key release like this. Brec Bassinger is suitably winning as one of the victims, Oded Fehr is great as a compassionate doctor, Lauren Call is outstanding as the rookie park ranger who has to take charge and I liked Charles Esten as her boss.
It turns out that the tragic real life event resulted in big changes in the way parks were run and this film treats the subject suitably seriously.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10