Fuzzy and Frenzied: Night of The Killer Bears (2022)

Night of The Killer Bears (AKA "The World of Killing People") (Thailand, 2022)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Sananthachat Thanapatpisal, Patchata Jan-Ngern, Khemanit Jamikorn

"Ted meets Terrifier" the ads say. Yeah, no, it's nothing like that. I mean, it's weird like Ted (2012), but nowhere at the level of gory gruesomeness as Terrifier (2017). Still, not bad!

Night of The Killer Bears (2022) opens with something out of Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood (1971), with a lone female worker at a resort serving some nice guy his four cups of coffee and doing her best to disregard his advances. As night falls, the resort closes early from a very slow day, the lone worker continues cleaning up the place and, to little to no surprise, nice guy turns out to be a "nice guy" as he returns to creep up on his victim. What comes next is twist upon twists upon twists as some people are not who they seem to be and heads get decapitated.

In comes another day and we now focus our attention to five young adults heading to the same resort for a friendly reunion of sorts as it's been years since they all last seen one another. Its owner welcomes them with cold reserve (like, suspiciously cold) and tension appears to be holding the gang from being completely chummy, hinted to be caused by a tragic event that led to them splitting up to begin with. It also doesn't help that a few of these buds are hiding terrible secrets. Shockingly vile and horribly monstrous secrets. And it is these secrets that may or may not be reason why the resort is suddenly being stalked by killers wearing giant teddy bear heads.

Not gonna go deep into the plot, but its original title "The World of Killing People" best describes what's in store for us in this movie; it's about various characters getting their murder on as one twist stumbles unto another, leaving red herrings and main casts running around either slaughtering or getting slaughtered left and right. It's half-way played seriously and half-way darkly comedic, keeping us on toes as we try and figure out what's really going on in this picture past the zany madness and blood, and most of the time it works. I love how the more maniacally insane the situation gradually becomes, the more the story becomes more coherent somehow, and the casts did play their roles well enough to warrant an interest to where their own little stories are going, albeit it comes with the drawback of some plot holes and loose ends that never really got answered.

When it comes to the murders, Night of The Killer Bears (2022) struts a decent massacre despite a share of the kills being done in CG. They're mostly basic stabbings, but the few that stood out has a cartoonish streak that fits the movie's grimly humorous tone, such as one poor lass getting an impromptu breast operation via hunting knife, topped with a gooey silicone punchline! The titular killer bears perpetrate the killing spree, though, interestingly, they're not the main bads of the film as they're more of lackeys to somebody else pulling the strings in the shadow. We do eventually get a reveal to whoever is masterminding most of the massacre (read, most) and the last act is just absolute bonkers by then, with the real villain donning their own bear suit with a huge head and doing their darnest to keep it on while attempting to kill off the remaining survivors. 

Practically, the horror and humor is all over in this movie, not exactly parodying itself, but relishing instead in its own resulting weirdness as a slasher. Night of The Killer Bears (2022) is just a hoot of a good time if you're looking for a bodycount movie that isn't afraid to be darkly silly and bloodily messy, where victims can be killers and killers can be victims, and not to mention looney enough to associate mascot teddy bear heads with knife-wielding, sledgehammer-swinging maniacs! 

Bodycount:

1 male found slaughtered to death

1 male decapitated with a machete

1 female slashed across the neck with a machete, decapitated

1 male seen knifed to death (opening credit)

1 female seen knifed in the neck (opening credit)

1 female stabbed through the breast with a hunting knife, silicone torn off

1 male seen stabbed to death

1 male sliced down in half with an axe

1 male stabbed through the mouth with a machete

1 male stabbed to death with a hunting knife

1 male hacked with an axe

1 male hacked with an axe

1 male gets a thrown axe to the neck

1 male slashed across the throat, stabbed through with a hunting knife

1 male gutted with a hunting knife, stabbed in the neck

1 male stabbed to death with a hunting knife

1 female ran through with a machete

1 male brained to death with a sledgehammer

1 male drowned in a diving incident (flashback)

1 male dies from a gunshot wound

1 male beaten with a branch, knifed in the eye

Total: 22