Director: Taneli Mustonen, Brad Watson
Year: 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Alligator/Crocodile
Plot:
Taking a scenic trip together, a group of friends takes a plane trip through a local swamp to scatter a dead friend’s ashes, but when an accident strands them in the swamp, they find themselves stalked and killed by ravenous alligators protecting their territory from intruders and must band together to survive.
Review:
Overall, this was a solid and entertaining creature feature. Among the better elements with this one is the generally cheesy and overall intriguing means that it goes about getting the setup for not just the ravenous gator attacks but also the group of victims out to the swamp. The initial idea of the gators getting poisoned with a special drug supply that’s shown getting dumped into the river by a drug lord during a federal raid on the compound serves as a way to explain the extra aggression and unnatural activity exhibited here, which is quite fun to see play out. Likewise, the idea of the trip being undertaken to honor a friend’s memory who had just recently died in an accident that was inadvertently their fault is enough of a reason to get them out into the middle of nowhere, especially with the sketchy behavior shown that they ignored to take the trip in the first place.
That makes for a strong base to string the series of extended but no less intriguing attacks off of. The incidental crash and emergency landing in the swamp, which is then further impeded by the creatures trying to break into the wreckage to get at the last ones out of the plane, gives this a fine starting attack scene with the compounding chaos creating a lot to like. The first few encounters on land, taking out stragglers on the outskirts of the group or just emerging out of nowhere to snap at them, help out rather nicely, and the larger scenes have a lot to like. From the creatures chasing the group out of the woods to a flimsy shack for protection or an escape attack on a raft that gets ambushed and the slow-motion trek past the sleeping creatures, it manages to pull off a series of decent enough scenes that aren’t entirely original but are serviceable enough, especially with the practical effects and gore over the CGI creations used elsewhere. These provide the film with enough to be enjoyable.
There are some issues with this one that hold it back. The biggest drawback with this one is the rather stifled pacing that makes everything feel quite sluggish and slow-going despite the quick running time. Focusing on the slew of issues it has with the main group, who are going through the problems that they are, most of these make the group feel even more unlikable than they already are, which isn’t a good look for things. With fidelity concerns in a relationship, past examples of cowardice being used to psychologically unravel people into activities that will compromise their safety unnecessarily, or featuring a twist ending that puts their behavior straight out of another movie entirely simply to have a surprising outcome featured, the group here is really hard to get behind and the film does little to make them any better the longer it goes on. Combined with the usual assortment of bad decision-making found in this particular genre and some generally underwhelming CGI for the crocodiles, this one does have some flaws to it.
Overview: ***.5/5
An appropriately cheesy and enjoyable creature feature, this one manages to come off far better than it should and has just enough drawbacks to be let down slightly. Viewers who appreciate this style of presentation or are fans of this kind of cheesy genre effort will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution with it.
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