Maneater

MANEATER concerns a small town with a big cat problem when a truck crashes, unleashing a Bengal tiger to hunt for local prey. Several human snacks later, the sheriff (Gary Busey) is on the case.

Alas, the killer kitty isn't so easy to catch. Many lives are lost, including an entire national guard unit!

While there are a few bloody extremities on display, the actual violence is mostly offscreen. There's no real profanity or nudity either. Busey is quite good in his role, and the low-budget CGI is kept to a blessed minimum...

Maneater (2007)

** (out of 4)

Sci-Fi Channel movie is yet another Jaws rip, although this one has a few things going for it. A giant tiger is eating people in an Appalachian Mountains town so the sheriff (Gary Busey) and a bounty hunter (Ian D. Clark) try to track it down and kill it. Both of these characters are directly out of the Jaws handbook but thankfully both actors give very good performances so this weakness is the script can be overlooked. The story itself is another story as it's very weak and doesn't really offer anything new that we haven't seen countless times before. The one added storyline is a young boy who seems to have a connection with this tiger but this here comes off very forced and silly. The tiger used was real except for a few scenes where a CGI one was used.

So yes, it's called Maneater, which is dodgy, and yes it looks as if it was shot with a budget of about $12.50, and yes it's clichéd and cheesy, but it was about a million times better than I was expecting it to be.

Gary Busey plays Sheriff Grady Barnes, who is the main main character (yeah, double "main", there's a few, they can't decide which to follow). There's a tiger (just a regular tiger, which surprised me, not like, 500 kilo, 10 metre long killing machine, just a Bengal) loose in his hick-town, and they don't take too kindly to tigers 'round these parts. Seriously though, it's an actual tiger, no CG, not even a puppet, it's a genuine freaking tiger. The acting was much better than I thought it'd be, the most terrible was just from the red-shirts, who basically don't even count. The setting was believable and the characters were bearable.

That is not however to say, that the movie was good, or even remotely interesting for that matter. I say it was about a million times better than I thought it was, but I had it pegged as bad as it was, then a whole lot worse. At the end of the day it's just another film that seemed to have been made for the sake of being made. Gary Busey's usual wild charisma was noticeable, literally in only a single line. And that's pretty much it.

There's an evil Christian mother, but she's not that evil. I mean, compare her to the bitch from Carrie and she's like mother-of-the-year award material, she just doesn't let her son go to school or play make-believe games, they had room to make her big-bad, but didn't. Then there was her son, who has some bizarre connection to the tiger, he sleep walks, he's a traumatised little kid, so of course he must be twisted, right? No wrong, no Michael Myers secreted away here. Ah, and that British hunter, a foreigner! Surely he is the human menace! No? He's not? Oh, just another guy who gets a whole lot of screen time but does nothing? Yeah, figured.

So, if someone told me they wanted to watch it, I probably wouldn't go so far as to kill them for even suggesting such a thing, but I'd probably leave the room.

-Gimly

Maneater is the kind of movie that seems to start with the right idea but soon slinks away in reverse, as if apologizing for existing. There's a loose tiger, yes, but it acts with the timidity of an insecure extra. Instead of spectacle, what unfolds is a long and fruitless wait-like a circus tent set up, but the lion never shows. The plot even rehearses a greatest hits of disaster cinema: a small town, a local festival, sensationalist journalists, a mysterious hunter, a rigid sheriff, and a weird kid with a spiritual connection to the beast. But it all feels like window dressing-a suspense of "almost," an action of "maybe," a tension of "later." And when that "later" finally arrives, we're already emotionally checked out.

The tiger, which should be the star, is filmed like a state secret. The camera hides in leaves, branches, cowardly POV shots-the predator is more heard than seen, more rumor than presence. And while this spares the film from disastrous CGI, it only reinforces its narrative cowardice. The creature attacks as if following a serial killer's manual-ripping limbs, scattering body parts-but without the heat of savagery. Everything feels procedural, almost administrative. There are pathetic attempts to instill fear, like the scene where a journalist tries to lure the beast with bait-an unlicensed Jaws-cage-sequence knockoff. But all we get is a hard cut to an already bloodied scene. No attack, no climax, just silence and shocked extras.

Sheriff Grady Barnes, played by Gary Busey (still nursing a hangover from his more notable roles), carries the plot with the fixed gaze of someone clearly cast in a different movie. The town he tries to protect has no charm, identity, or emotional geography-it's just backdrop, generic forest with slapped-on signs. As for the hunter, James Graham, he sports a Poirot-worthy mustache but can't even solve a crossword, let alone the mystery of the beast. And the boy, Roy-who seems to be rehearsing some Carrie-esque suburban mystique-never evolves beyond a sketch. In theory, he embodies the sheriff's dead son; in practice, he's just another weak link between two characters who never share real emotional weight.

In the end, the beast does attack-but only on the clock. The final minutes unfold in a roadside convenience store, with explosions, gasoline, and a whole lot of noise for very little impact. Maneater tries to be the kind of movie that survives on concept alone: "What if Jaws, but with a tiger?" But it forgets that a good concept is nothing without execution that bites. There are no scares, no bold choices, not even glorious mistakes. The film is afraid of its own roar. If there's any consolation, it might be in the cinematography-which, surprise, has color. The forest is green, the lighting decent, the festival poor but quaint. But that's not enough. I'd take a festival of cheesy CGI and digital blood with some ambition over this domesticated danger. It's a movie that behaves like a pedigree-less beast, caged in the ditch of near-cinema.

I knew about this movie existing, because I had stumbled upon movies in the 'Maneater Series' before, I just never had the opportunity to sit down and watch this 2007 movie titled "Maneater" before now in 2024.

The storyline was pretty straightforward, and something that would would expect from a TV movie. So writer Philip Morton didn't exactly fail to deliver here. However, nor did he deliver anything outstanding or spectacular for director Gary Yates to bring to life on the screen. There are two storylines running in the movie, the one with the sheriff trying to protect the town against a wild tiger near the town, and the story of a strange wonder kid who turned into a 'Tiger Whisperer'. The latter felt so out of place with the tone of the movie.

"Maneater" wasn't exactly a movie that was crammed with big names and familiar faces. Of the entire cast ensemble, I was actually only familiar with Gary Busey. And you know what you get with that guy, so enough said. Actually, I do enjoy watching new faces and unfamiliar talents on the screen when I watch movies, so "Maneater" was not losing any points on that account.

There is a fair amount of people being mauled and killed by the tiger, except we don't get to see it. We always get to see what is left behind after the attack. It worked okay, but I mean it would have been nice to have had some exciting and thrilling scenes where we see a tiger attacking people. But with "Maneater" being a TV movie, then of course that was just two things that didn't go hand-in-hand.

It should be noted, however, that the prosthetics and props of the mauled body parts were actually fairly good and came off as being somewhat passable for realistic. And that, at least, counted for something when we were deprived of the scenes where the tiger was mauling its prey.

My rating of "Maneater" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.