Director: Brandon Slagle
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
In the middle of a hurricane, a prison transport transferring a group of prisoners is forced to stop at a run-down police station to stay the night, but when the trip is crashed first by a criminal group looking to free one of the prisoners and monster alligators must work together to get away alive.
Review:
Overall, this was a pretty enjoyable creature feature. One of the better features of this one is a highly likable and enjoyable setup that manages to generate a thrilling enough scenario. The whole idea of the prison transfer taking place during the storm and being forced off the road to seek shelter at the locale makes for a great way of getting them there with the requisite amount of bodies to get dropped later going through the prisoners and the staff, while the secondary subplot involving the new group looking to use this as a cover for their breaking one of them out of prison serves it quite well. As well, that this ends up bringing the gators out of their hiding spot to start attacking the group left inside during this situation makes this one quite fun.
This becomes the other really enjoyable aspect here where the film has a rather solid series of creature attack scenes. Since the creatures are loose and on the hunt from the beginning following the opening attack on the couple in the abandoned building, there’s a great string of attacks here that are built rather nicely around the creatures’ genuine death-rolling ability, the sneak-attacks that come about with them appearing out of the vents or the flooded hallways to pounce and strike victims is a lot of fun. Not only that but once they get more aware of the situation and start fighting back the action becomes quite a bit more exciting with a lot of gunplay to get involved alongside the nice gory bits for the victims which manage to give this one a lot to like.
There isn’t a whole lot to dislike here but it does have some minor issues. Among the biggest factors against this one is the usually atrocious CGI used for the crocodiles during the attack scenes. The bargain-basement CGI featured here rendering the creatures with the authenticity of a video-game cut scene is especially disheartening considering the more earnestness found elsewhere so the seriousness of the human drama clashes wildly with the cheesy creature action. Full of the hallmarks of this type of genre including the unnatural texture, exaggerated movements, and changing dimensions within the scene, it becomes rather disheartening to see these scenes taken out by the lackluster effects work featured.
As well, there’s also a problem with the film’s insistence on trotting out tired old tropes that are completely unbelievable in the situation that’s being presented. With this one going through cliches that include the prisoner with the heart of gold that helps turn the tide from the prisoners to the officers, having to trust each other to get through the night against a greater enemy, and double-crosses galore throughout here, these are hard to get past since there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that getting out of the situation is possible. Even a completely unnecessary sequence of the intruders forcing one of the officers to run a gauntlet of the criminals once they see she’s returned alive following a gator attack two seconds earlier which is just odd and misplaced. Overall, these are enough to bring this down slightly.
Overview: ***.5/5
A fun gator effort that only has a few minor drawbacks, this is a rather enjoyable time for those that appreciate this kind of genre effort with a more serious take on the style over the cheesy entries. Those that are curious about it, enjoy this kind of genre overall, or are fans of the creative crew will like this one the most while only those that don’t enjoy the flaws here should heed caution with it.
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