Mmmmm, schnackies.
In choosing a follow up to his critically acclaimed (for some reason, because it was only OK) debut Wolf Creek Greg McLean chose an old favourite, the big scary animal movie.
This time it is crocodiles, or crocodile to be specific. The story starts and ends in Australia’s Northern Territory, where an American joins a tourist cruise along a river.
The American turns out to be a travel writer, though that is just a reason to get an American in the cast and on the boat. As with every disaster or monster movie there are a host of miscellaneous extras of various backgrounds and circumstances, around 12 in all… initially (wink!) and of course when the shit hits the fan various among them clash and react differently.
But I’m getting ahead of the plot… a little.
The cruise is “manned” by the daughter of the never-seen owner, named Kate, and her faithful dog Kevin is along for the ride. We spend 10 or so minutes meeting the cast and hearing tidbits about their background and why they are on the boat. I call this time meet the soon deceased, and use it to pick 1) who will be the first to croak and 2) who will live. I’m almost always wrong about 1) but can usually get 2) right, and I did here.
Along the cruise two boneheads show up to stir Kate and a minor standoff ensues, where a couple of passengers muster the courage to tell the clowns to “bugger off mate”, (hey this is set in Australia after all, strewth!).
Boneheads leave. Kate turns the boat to head back to dock, only a passenger spies a flare in the distance, followed by others. Obeying the law of the sea (probably) Kate decides to do the right thing and check it out even though it causes a delay to all.
They arrive at the source of the flare to find only an upturned dinghy and BANG, something runs into the boat, causing it to slowly sink. While they have time Kate steers the boat to a tiny mid-river sandbank and they rapidly disembark.
Now the fun starts.
The boneheads once again reappear, to pad out the onshore numbers and create a bit more tension, and ol’ croccy starts munching. It soon becomes evident that they are all intruding on the crocodile’s home turf, and he is none too pleased with their presence.
Like hippos, where you aren’t supposed to get between a hippo and the water, the live bait that is the survivors need to get ashore to calm the croc down, only like Frogger doing that involves crossing a dangerous area, namely swimming past his choppers.
So they try a few plans, needless to say they use three because the first couple don’t work, and each failed plan brings about a more croc-snacks. There are promises made and broken, allegiances made and conflicts created and settled in between fatalities, and as a special treat I got to hear someone call a guy “numbnuts” for perhaps the first time in cinema history.
McLean sensibly avoids certain standards, not everyone who gets chomped deserves it and those that deserve it (at least in your mind) don’t always get what’s coming to them. Some things work that shouldn’t and where human interaction is concerned things don’t ever go exactly to plan.
I was happy enough with the pace, the frequency of kills and thankfully the heavy handed Steve Irwin style Ozzy slang was kept to a minimum, the finale was OK and happily when they ran out of things to do and people to kill…
The film stopped. No Lord of the Rings 37 pointless endings here, movie part ends, the credits roll.
Final Rating – 7 / 10. Less tongue in cheek than Lake Placid, but less serious than Wolf Creek, Rogue gets the lazy video night mix about right. Even my wife watched it full through, and she stayed up nights after watching The Sixth Sense!
