Grizzly II: Revenge (2020)

Directed by André Szöts. Starring Steve Inwood, John Rhys-Davies, Deborah Raffin, Dick Anthony Williams, Louise Fletcher, Deborah Foreman, Edward Meeks.

An almost completely unrelated sequel “37 years in the making” (because whatever the heck the filmmakers shot back in 1983 took 37 years to finally get released). No one bothers with crafting a story; it’s just a vengeful mama grizzly wreaking havoc on the local human populace while the humans occasionally put forth a half-assed effort to try and stop her. An amateurish and incomprehensible muddle, patched together out of spare parts, depicting a bear that’s supposed to be enormous even though the camera never provides evidence, and more focused on showing inane concert footage in the second half than anything related to finding and killing the beast (if all the concert sequences were removed, the movie would barely run an hour long). Unworthy of anyone but undiscriminating connoisseurs of cinematic cheese and recklessly devoted completists; a couple of well-known actors have roles of at least some significance (Rhys-Davies’ scenery-chewing French-Canadian trapper comes as close as anything else to actually being enjoyable), but it’s a pretty crass marketing ploy to sell this thing as “starring” Charlie Sheen, George Clooney and Laura Dern when they each have just a few minutes of screentime at the beginning. Also look for a few now-recognizable character actors like Ian McNeice and Timothy Spall, if one is tempted against advice to look at all.

4/100