AKA a tepid creature feature rehash that left me bored, annoyed and surprised – surprised that it got an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 75% audience score. I was also left with a bitter aftertaste of confusion – how did the same guy behind the fantastic ‘Don’t Breathe’ have made this forgettable frolic into a Florida hurricane.
2/5 Screams
MATURE CONTENT AND SPOILERS AHEAD:
I had high hopes for this summer alligator romp, having loved Sam Raimi’s first delve into the mysterious world of gritty, postmodern psychological horror. But, I was already doubtful about how captivating it was going to prove to be because it seemed to give every single important event in the story line away in the bloody trailer. And I mean everything.
For those of you unfamiliar, this film follows a young woman called Hayley – we learn she is a struggling child swimming prodigy, lazy foreshadowing if you ask me, along with ‘apex predator’, wince – who tries to track down her father in amongst a vicious Florida storm. She tries to find her Dad as her street floods and suddenly alligators have infested their crawl space. The next 87 minutes are just man vs predator. There’s no real intelligence to their survival, no passion seemed to be injected into this project. It came across as if the producers and creators were themselves bored whilst making it.
Side note: Kaya Scloderio really doesn’t suite blonde. The whole film lacks pzazz, creativity and inspiration. There’s no real gore nor jump scares. The CGI is pretty good but the alligators are just hurdles, minor bumps in this pointless story. There’s barely even any characterisation or connection with the father and daughter – they could have done so much with that relationship and tugged at the heartstrings, but they didn’t. They just made them somewhat estranged and aw now they’re all patched up, I mean he had to lose an arm for that but okay.
The attention to detail wasn’t even very good, for example: she would have winced when lowering her very injured leg into the water. And her CPR on her dad at the end is far too fast. Honestly, the scariest part of this film is the horde of spiders crawling – ha, double meaning – all over her face. Nope, nope. My worst nightmare – give me hungry ‘gators any day. The deaths such as Wayne don’t rouse any reaction from the audience because, you guessed it, we’ve seen it all in the trailers. Her arm being bitten? In the trailer. Wayne’s death? In the trailer. Baby gators? You get the picture. Her trapped in the shower with a gator? In the trailer. I could go on.
My lasting impression once the credits rolled to the hilarious ‘See ya’ later alligator’ was that this film was a waste of time, good thing it was short. And…I really have nothing else to say because this film as so bland it was like Rivita crackers trying to be bruschetta. Sorry, Raimi – try better next time. My question for you guys is: would you rather be trapped in a house with a blind, serial killing psycho (all I have to say is turkey baster… yuck) OR trapped in a rapidly flooding house with a group of alligators hunting you? Let me know in the comments below:))
Don't Scream 