‘Grizzly Night’ Review – Historical Bear Horror Movie Is More Infotaining Than Entertaining

Before settling in for a fun tale of gory bear encounters and dispensable campers, audiences should prepare themselves for a different kind of movie. Grizzly Night is not about having a good time, seeing as how the horror of reality weighs heavily on everything, even from an early start.

The cold open has an apt preview of what’s all to come, and that doesn’t come across like a scene out of a horror movie. In what is quite the opposite, director Burke Doeren and writers Katrina Mathewson & Tanner Bean pave the road for a docudrama. At times a very tense one, but that doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t an outright creature-feature. That is simply because Grizzly Night is based on real bear attacks—ones that are considered some of the deadliest in U.S. history.

After August 13, 1967, the way Americans looked at grizzly bears changed forever. The catalyst for this shift was a pair of maulings that happened on the same night in Glacier National Park, Montana. The incidents in question, which are often referred to as the “Night of the Grizzlies,” are now the basis of a new movie called Grizzly Night. What could have easily been a loose and low interpretation of the fatalities ends up being something more of a reenactment. And as the movie shows with complete transparency, fact is often scarier than fiction.