Lake Placid vs. Anaconda (2015) by A.B. Stone


Director: A.B. Stone
Year: 2015
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature

Plot:
Attempting to harvest local crocodile genes, the release of giant anacondas forces the town sheriff and a wildlife officer to try to hunt down the deadly creatures rampaging through the local community.

Review:

Overall, this one was quite the enjoyable and entertaining offering. Despite being the fifth entry in each series, the fact that this one manages to incorporate the aspects of each one is quite impressive, managing to go through the snake series with a marginal recap of what happened there and keeping the events that transpired so as not to truly forget the efforts of that franchise while keeping the location and set-up from the final crocodile effort in place so as to ensure that there's some cohesive logic between the two.

This makes the meeting of the two all the more logical and enjoyable by putting them into the universe which allows for a lot of great parts here as the action between the two creatures brings in a lot of fun. The opening attempt to conduct their experiments that results in the creatures getting loose is quite fun with the croc getting loose and forcing a host of defensive tactics to free itself, the baby crocs get a really nice scene where they stalk and attack a poacher in the forest, the initial assault on the sorority initiation is quite impressive as the attack on the wake-boarder leads to the boat attack and subsequent massacre on the beach at the same time, the chase through the woods and finally the attempts to flee in their cars results in some really enjoyable and exciting suspense scenes with the attempts to break into the car to get at them and the chases once the girls are free makes this one quite the highlight. The nice gore and kills here certainly aren't that bad either, and the comic relief from the ineffectual deputy takes on some goofy charms here that manages to feel in tune with the rest of the film here which makes for it's positive points.

There's a few small flaws here, namely the fact that the titular creatures only get one real battle here to come together, and it's barely worth mentioning with the majority of the time anyway taken up with the pleas between the two human parties both for killing and saving the animals. That's not all that impressive here and really could've given the snakes more time in the story with them barely appearing anyway as the crocs get more of the screen time, and with a few small re-writes could've removed them from the story altogether and made this a sole killer crocodile film. While the CGI again looks pretty bad and gives away both the inconsistent size and appearance of both creatures, the last flaw here is a slew of unresolved and unexplained encounters that are never picked up or explored again leading to question why a ton of time was spent on their inclusion. Still, for the most part this one was a lot of great fun.


Overview: ***/5
Despite a few hiccups here and there, this serves as a solid and wholly watchable mash-up between these two franchises that leaves this one with a lot to like for both series. Give this a chance if you're into either style of film or like these kinds of creature features, while those that haven't been swayed by either franchise thus far will be well-served to avoid this one.

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