Away from the Hype: ROAR

On-set accidents are incredibly common no matter how many precautions professionals take. Stuntmen regularly get injured and, in some tragic cases, die performing stunts in highly regulated settings. There are always going to be cowboys who bend the rules and cause accidents – for instance, some of the alleged corner-cutting that led to the awful events on the set of Alec Baldwin’s Rust. But for the most part, we like to think that those stunt performers and actors who put themselves in harm’s way, are doing it knowing that the safety nets, both real and metaphorical, are in place.

In 1981’s Roar there are none of those safety nets, and because of this, 70 of the 140 members of the cast and crew were seriously injured. And when I say seriously, I’m not just talking about broken bones, I’m talking about people getting scalped, people needing facial reconstructive surgery, and even people ending up with gangrenous limbs. And all because they wanted to make a movie about big cats while using untrained animals. What could go wrong?

Everything, apparently. 

A dam had burst that ended up destroying sets and freeing some of the big cats, three of which were killed by local law enforcement. The animals were untrained so cameras were set up for hours waiting for them to move, and, I cannot stress this enough, the animals severely injured many, many people. Throats were bitten, bones were broken, and a lion bit Tippi Hedron’s head so hard she received tooth scrapes on her skull. The budget ballooned and shooting the movie took five years with the overall production eventually taking 11 years. 

It is frankly baffling that no one died. Roar is not like the other movies featured in previous Away from the Hypes as it is much less well-known and the hype is the thing. If someone asked me if I wanted to watch a movie with this IMDB tagline: ‘A naturalist living with big cats in East Africa expects a visit by his family of four from Chicago. A mix-up leaves him searching for his family, who have been left in the clutches of wild lions’ I’d say not really. If someone asked me if I wanted to watch a movie that took 11 years to make and involved big cats just going insane on its cast and crew, I’d say definitely. And then I’d write about the experience here.

Roar

Billed as an adventure-comedy, Roar is neither. It’s sort of a horror movie, sort of a documentary, a bit of a home movie, and a lot of whatever genre the Jackass movies fall into. The tone is as consistent as the editing, which is to say it’s all over the place. The movie, which took five years to film, has the manic energy of something conceived, shot, and edited the weekend before it was set to premiere. 

Noel Marshall spends the entire movie sprinting around out of breath, shouting his dialogue, and getting his ass kicked by big cats. His attempts to stay cool around the cats constantly fails as though he’s saying to other characters they’re harmless, it’s hard to take him seriously when they are jumping on him, knocking him down, swarming him, biting him, swinging their paws at him, and just basically softening him up for dinner. 

The rest of the family, played by Marshall’s real-life family, are trapped in tonal confusion as they find themselves in his house as he is on the way to collect them from the airport in a wacky misunderstanding. They seem to be, moment to moment, terrified of the lions or joking around about them. One example is the scene where Melanie Griffith’s character, Melanie, is being crushed by a lion that is biting her hair. She’s clearly in distress and in danger but her brother’s line is “Oh, hey, he’s just trying to give you a kiss”, which is followed by a scene where the family escapes, screaming, from the house. 

The problem arises because Marshall wanted to make a movie about conservation and protecting the big cats, but he posits the cats as the villains for big parts of the movie. The family in the house is terrorized by the lions, tigers, cheetahs, etc. for a majority of Roar and some visitors to the house early on are attacked by tigers. It’s not until near the end that the family realizes the cats want to be friends, and that’s only after they have clearly been attacked by the cats multiple times. 

Once the cats seem to be more friendly, the movie becomes a soft-focus montage of sorts of the humans and cats living in harmony, with the family ignoring their myriad of injuries. It would be like if Jaws ended with Chief Brody adopting the shark and letting his kids ride on its back.  

In the end, though, the appeal of this movie isn’t its storyline or characters. It’s watching people try to act with lions who do not appreciate one of the simple rules of a movie set: don’t try to eat your co-stars. Admittedly, the novelty of watching these animals do their thing with foolish actors trying to make the point that humans and animals can co-exist while being openly attacked by said animals wears off fairly quickly. It’s like watching Jackass if Jackass was one stunt for two hours.

The standout character is Mativo, a friend of Marshall, who is the audience surrogate, constantly talking about how f*cking wild it is that they’re just hanging out with these dangerous animals. The actor playing him, Kyalo Mativo, is clearly deeply uncomfortable being around these animals, with good reason, as it feels as though every time Marshall tries to reassure someone that the cats aren’t dangerous, one of the cats jumps on him or knocks him to the ground. 

Watching Marshall get his ass handed to him by big cats in pretty much every scene he appears in is just incredible. Even though you know they’re not going to kill him on screen – he did receive pretty horrific injuries though – it does make you wince watching these massive animals just bat him around like he’s a toy. And it’s hilarious to see him trying to talk about how he’s kindred with their beautiful nature, even when they seem determined to just absolutely murder him at all times. 

Final Thoughts: Roar

This movie is wild for a variety of reasons. Tonally it’s so all over the place, that it’s hard to settle in and enjoy it. If you go in hoping for a comedy, you’re not going to be happy and if you’re looking for horror, you’ll get some joy but not much. The genre changes on a dime and never really succeeds in whatever genre it’s embodying at any given moment. 

The editing feels as though the movie’s edit bay was set on fire and they had to get the movie made as quickly as possible. Scenes jump around between settings with no rhyme or reason, there are long shots of animals doing nothing that drag on for ages and ages, and scenes feel like they repeat themselves. This frenetic feeling isn’t helped by Marshall‘s lead performance which is characterized by shouting all of his dialogue and sprinting from place to place at all times. Perhaps the adrenaline of nearly being eaten all day every day for five years plays a part in this, but it’s not the most fun thing to sit through. 

The main attraction of this piece though is the lions, tigers, panthers, cheetahs, etc. who basically out-act everyone else on the screen. It is impressive to see so many of these big cats on screen at once, and in a better-made movie, it would be such an amazing visual in a very compelling story, instead of a strangely tonal mess of horror movie/conservation message. 

From the hype around this one, I expected something watchable and cringy fun. Instead, it’s got a few incredible moments where, against your better judgment, you are convinced you’re about to watch people get mauled to death on camera but mostly it’s just too poorly made to be enjoyable. Watch the trailer instead and donate to a conservation fund like Panthera and you’ll have spent your time more wisely. 

Have you seen Roar? What are your thoughts on the film’s hype? Let us know in the comments.

Watch Roar