Croc! (2022) by Paul W. Franklin

Director: Paul W. Franklin

Year: 2022

Country: United Kingdom

Alternate Titles: Crocodile Vengeance

Genre: Creature Feature

Plot:

Gathering together at a remote country house, a bride-to-be and her friends prepare for their upcoming wedding plans, but when their festivities are crashed by a massive flesh-eating alligator on the wedding grounds they’re forced to extreme measures to get out of the situation alive.

Review:

This was a decent enough if overall flawed genre effort. The fun of this one is pretty much relegated almost exclusively to the concept of the massive croc being able to pull off the kinds of attacks it does in one of the most ludicrous and cheesy means possible. The creature’s ability to sneak up on people in what would’ve been in full view of others but don’t notice it until it’s snapped them down becomes immensely cheesy here as this goes on with the creature appearing out of nowhere to savagely bite someone to pieces in a massive blood-spray. With the film going for a high-energy tempo here with the initial ambush happening quite early in the film and not acting as if it’s snatching stragglers around the compound where no one will find them, it’s quite fun once it gets going with the attacks taking place and constantly forcing them into a means of defense in order to escape which adds a nice level of cheese and camp to everything.

That said, there are some big issues that hold this one down. One of the bigger drawbacks involves the overall lazy means through which this one keeps the group in danger at the mansion. Almost immediately after their stay, a couple is attacked by the creature and manage to get a full view of the creature’s appetite by watching it devour someone whole, yet the incident is brushed over and ignored for the lamest of reasons instead of alerting everyone in ear-shot that a vicious animal is loose. Several lies stretching the truth would’ve been fine to cover their tracks while still providing enough motive to bring about a means of tactics to either barricade themselves for help to arrive or to go on a hunting trip to find and stop it. Other means of stupidity like this run rampant throughout the rest of the film beyond this one moment and the whole thing comes off quite underwhelming.

The other issue to be had here is the means through which this tries to make the flimsy story have enough excess work done to keep its running time up to a normal length. The sidestories here are plain uninteresting, from the stereotypical unfaithful groom who’s out to sleep with every member of the bridal party, the equally sleazy single father that sleeps with everyone he comes across, and the eventual reveal of everything that results in an endless melodrama about these stories coming to light all give this an inherently cliched and unexciting setup. As well, there are also the usual problems involving the lackluster CGI that follows the expected and usual setups including those that don’t fit into the screen, the constant bits of splotchy graphics that don’t look completely rendered in the slightest, or come together with the usual realistic actions with what they’re making the croc pull off. Overall, these manage to bring the film down just enough.

Overview: **.5/5

An underwhelming if watchable genre effort, this one is harmed enough by the flaws which are pretty detrimental to overcome the cheesiness of the film’s more obvious positives. Those that are fans of this kind of cheesy creature feature, don’t mind the flaws or are fans of the creative crew while those who are turned off by the style or approach here should heed caution.