Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Microreview [film]: Black Water

Get it? Australia is down under! DERP.


The Meat

Not long ago I reviewed Andrew Traucki's minimalist Australian shark-horror flick THE REEF. I liked it, so it seemed natural to take a look at his debut movie, the minimalist Australian croc-horror flick BLACK WATER. Since it's basically the same movie, only set amongst mangrove swamp instead of the deep blue sea, with the human cast needing to swim 300m across a river rather than 8 km to land, it helped me come to some very important conclusions:

1. Sharks are scarier than crocs.
2. Sharks inspire better soundtracks than crocs do.
3. Crocs are, however, better actors.
4. Crocs make this hideous crunching sound as they eat your friends, whereas sharks spare you this indignity.
5. Your chances of survival in these two scenarios is about the same.

The Math

Objective quality: 5/10

Bonuses: +1 for using awesome croc actors instead of stupid CGI or animatronic crocs; +1 for the cap'n crunch moment

Penalties: -1 for it's like THE REEF only not as interesting

Cult film coefficient: 6/10