Opening Day: 3 April 2008

Synopsis:

Pete is an American travel writer reporting on the booming tourist industry in the Northern Territory. While taking a river cruise he finds himself stuck with a collection of interesting characters, including Kate, the beautiful local tour guide. There is an immediate attraction between the tow, but when their boat is rammed by something from below, the tour is thrown into disarray and they become stranded on a tiny mud island. As night falls and the tide starts to rise, the group slowly realise they are being stalked by a huge saltwater crocodile, beginning a terrifying struggle for survival in one of the most remote places in the world.

Movie Review:

Come on, you weren’t going to take this movie seriously, were you? It doesn’t take a very clever viewer to tell that this movie has “B-grade” spelt all over it. The not-very-creative title tells us that the creature is abnormally savage, and the not-so-creative poster tells us that that there will be a substantially high body count by the end of the movie. Just in case you think that we are self-righteously picky about genres like this, we will say there are some truly enjoyable moments in the movie. And we truly mean it.

After the considerable success that was Wolf Creek (2005), Greg Mclean returns to make this movie set in the scenic outback of Australia. A group of tourists go on a leisure wildlife cruise and get their boat overturned by a huge crocodile. They get stranded and yes, because they are in a group, they get eaten up one by one. Actually, we were expecting more people to die, but that’s not exactly the sanest thing to point out.

Judging from the first few shots of this movie shot in Australia, you may mistake it for a wildlife documentary. We love the extreme close-ups of the animals, the breathtaking scenery of the marshes and jungles, and everything looks serene and peaceful... until one buffalo is pulled underwater by a crocodile’s spring attack.

Then the story begins. Michael Vartan’s (Monster-in-law, One Hour Photo) American tourist appears into the scene and witnesses newspaper clippings in a run-down bar. We learn that he is a travel writer and is seemingly enthusiastic about going on such expeditions, that is, in a later hilarious scene, we learn that he is not the type of travel writer we had imagined him to be. Enter Radha Mitchell’s (Feast of Love, Silent Hill) caricatured tough babe character that steers the ill-fated boat. Unbothered by the annoying flies around her, she brings Vartan and the group of tourists played by a relatively unknown cast. This is when you’d expect them to be disposed one by one throughout the movie’s 92 minutes.

Because the characters are not exactly Oscar material, Vartan and Mitchell fare fairly well in the limited scope – in fact, well enough to make you feel for the flatly-written B-grade movie characters.

There are a few genuinely intense and breath-stopping sequences which although predictably played out, makes the viewer experience the exhilaratingly guilty pleasures of B-grade movies.

And how can we forget the titular rogue crocodile? When we first see its menacingly spiky tail whipping the waters, we felt a sense of threat and peril. Then we see it in its full glory during the movie’s finale. The part mechanized, part computer generated bulky creature is a typical B-grade monster which commits the typical stupid mistake to get itself killed.

Come on, when Mitchell’s character gets whisked off after one-odd hour into the movie, you also know that she will return somehow – she didn’t get top billing for nothing, you know. This is when we are affirmed that we are watching a B-grade movie, and it’s no use setting high expectations and being overly serious about the whole thing.

Movie Rating:

(A B-grade movie through and through, this rogue reptile delivers typical B-grade scares)

Review by John Li