Director: Alexandre Aja
Year: 2019
Country: USA/Serbia/Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
When a hurricane warning hits, a woman races to her old home to get her dad out of the area only to find the storm has brought a swarm of crocodiles into their home which traps them inside, forcing the two to try to survive both the creature and the surging water to escape alive.
Review:
This one was an incredibly fun and enjoyable effort. Among the film’s best aspects is the actual build-up in the first half that gets this one ready for the carnage to ensure. The realization of the father left behind in the middle of the hurricane comes off right after learning of the necessary swimming prowess to come into play later, giving everything we need in a quick, economical fashion. As the ensuing search towards finding him in the driving rain where the pounding rain escalating the danger of the situation with the impending lack of outside help as the ongoing evacuation keeps the authorities outside away from them while also providing the necessary explanations for why their phones won’t work due to downed powerlines or wasted batteries, leaving this with some solid suspense.
With them trapped by the storm, the series of confrontations against the creatures are top-notch. The first encounter where the creature attacks her trying to get him out of the basement gives this a fantastic start, much like the great sequence later on where they realize the second one’s down there as she tries to get the radio to call for help. A later plan to escape through the tunnel they came in provides some great tension with the race to get to the blocked stairs and being forced to go through their lair to go outside which has some fantastic action of the crocs swimming around. As well as the tense finale where they have to escape the flooding house where the race to get the flooding water under control, the crocs showing up at the right time ads some fine action and brutal confrontations, these offer up some fantastic action scenes that make the crocs look good with a great, times indistinguishable mix of animatronics and CGI mixed together. These are the films’ best qualities.
This one does have a few minor issues. The biggest problem here is the generally flimsy story that can’t support a full-length feature-length endeavor. The idea of the characters’ trapped in a flooding house works in short bursts as it does here, where this has to continually introduce other characters outside to interfere in their plans simply as a means to bump up the running time. Scenes like the looters at the market across the street or the sacrificial officers who are immediately ripped to shreds simply reek of cannon fodder to stretch out what’s going on while the repetitive quality of dropping them back into a house for another round of stalking speaks to the film running on empty to get to a respectable full-length feature. Had this been made into a short or featured more family members coming down to check on him so it organically adds more bodies, this one would’ve been a little easier to swallow but it’s not that bad overall.
Overview: ****.5/5
There’s quite a lot to like here with the tension and action featured here, although it does need a stronger story to impact how flimsy the storyline is. This is certainly recommended to fans of creature features or casual, mainstream horror-watchers while those that don’t should heed mild caution.
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