Summary:
A young woman finds herself trapped in a crawlspace with alligators after she attempts to rescue her father during a category 5 hurricane.
My Thoughts:
Horror movies don’t need to have amazingly complex plots in order for them to still work really well, in fact, some of the best horror movies ever made are incredibly simple. “The Evil Dead” is just a bunch of kids getting terrorized in a house. “Dawn of the Dead” is just a bunch of people getting terrorized in a mall. “Carrie” is just a kid terrorizing a school. Sometimes a simple storyline works really well for horror flicks, so I really had no qualms about sitting down to watch a movie where the only plot was about trying to survive a crocodile attack… and a category five hurricane. That seems simple enough of a plot for me, thought I, as I searched for some mindless horror flick to kick off my October horrorfest.
Just wind up the crocs and let ‘em chomp.
“Apex predator all day.”
Haley (Kaya Scodelario, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”) is a college student living in Florida. During a category five hurricane, Haley receives a call from her sister asking her to check on her father (Barry Pepper, “Saving Private Ryan”), whom, so far during the storm, has refused to answer his phone. Haley travels to her father’s home and finds him wounded, trapped in the basement by two hungry crocodiles. Like, jeepers, guys!
The first thing that caught my interest with this film was actually how well done the storm effects looked and how impressive the production design was. This is a film that takes place during a massive storm, and for most of the movie it really feels like these characters are beset on all sides by some torrential storm of the century. Wind whips debris across the screen constantly; characters are set waist deep in water for almost the whole film; muck and detritus are ubiquitous. There are several locations that look as if whole sets have been constructed (and destroyed) just for the sake of the film. There’s almost an entire street that looks like it suffers heavy damages, and the practical effects mixed with the visual effects just help to really sell this storm and the events happening. The storm also gets worse as the film goes on, so this helps to raise the stakes (and the water!).
The story, while perhaps a bit thin, is original, simple, and interesting. I liked the fact that the story is so incredibly simple; it becomes a survival story as much as a horror one- you fight to live, or you die. It’s as simple as that. The pacing really helps move the film along- we establish our characters and their relationships, and, within twenty minutes, those characters are already trapped and fighting off crocs. The interesting parts of the story come from how the stakes are raised and how our characters think to deal with the growing danger. There are definitely some flaws when it comes to the writing, particularly when it comes to introducing outside characters. There’s a moment in the film shortly after Haley learns that there are crocs in the water where she looks out from a gap in the foundation to see a group of looters at a gas station across the street. She screams, “I think there’s people out there!” and then we (the viewers) cut away from Haley and her dad for five minutes to watch crocs devour these random people. It feels slightly out of place, but I also didn’t mind. I mean, this is a horror flick, so you’ve sort of got to be okay with shoehorning in random death sequences in the name of upping the body count. That scene, as well as a few other random deaths, were certainly humorous; I’ll say that much.
Verdict:
The film really doesn’t aspire to be anything more than what it is at face value: a creature feature/ survival flick. While from a scary perspective, there weren’t really any moments that had me holding my breath, the film was competently made enough that I honestly would recommend it if you came across it on a rainy Saturday afternoon. It’s certainly not the best movie I’ve seen in the genre, but it’s far from the worst; it’s a pretty decent thrill ride with some pretty gory kills, and at an hour and twenty five minutes, it’s not like it demands much from the viewer.
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