Grace (Diana Glenn), her husband Adam (Andy Rodoreda) and Grace’s little sister Lee (Maeve Dermody) go on a two weeks driving holiday, they read about a place called Backwater Barry’s who does fishing trips out into the Mangrove Swamps of Northern Australia and they decide it would be a fun thing to do.
When they reach the place Barry is already out but his assistant Jim says he will take them so they get into a small, metal boat and head out to do some fishing. When they are down a small tributary of the main river the boat is capsized by a saltwater crocodile; once in the water everyone panics and the survivors manage to get to a tree. Somehow they need to get back to the boat, turn it over and get back to civilisation alive whilst being stalked by a large crocodile under the murky waters of the mangrove swamp.
Your interest is initially perked when it is announced that the film is based on true events, what events these are I don’t know as it doesn’t ever say, however as that announcement goes past my first thoughts upon realising that it was a low budget movie that contains an aggressive animal was hoping that the animal in question would not look like some guy running a puppet on a stick or something like that.
I have to say that they have done an impressive job. I do know (from the website) that they used real Crocodiles in the making of the film which is to be expected with maybe a bit of stock footage, but I was impressed by the quality of the Croc in the close up scenes which obviously had to be a puppet, or CGI of some description, it looked real enough to me. In fact I believe that the low budget may have been a blessing for the film as I wonder if they would have been tempted to make more of a gore fest had they had more money to play with rather than creating a fairly suspenseful film, even if it is a little slow and repetitive in places, but then how much can you do with three people up a tree and an overturned boat?
The acting seemed ok too; I’ve never heard of any of the actors in the film but none of them really hammed it up or overacted massively although you do find yourself questioning some of the decisions that they make in the film (as you do in most films like this), but that is more a script things rather than any fault of the actors.
There were a few things that I didn’t like about the movie. There were a few points when I thought that the silent moments in the film went on too long and the actors should have been saying something, a few too many panned shots of mangrove trees too to force home the fact that they are in the middle of nowhere. Also during a night storm scene the screen was completely dark, only showing people when there was a flash of lightening, the dark parts went on a bit too long. The biggest thing though was at certain points it is predicable; I guessed when all the attacks would take place and who would be attacked: Saying that though there are plenty of suspense filled, jumpy bits of the film that had me edgy and the heart pounding a bit, so I have to say that as a suspense film it did its job very nicely.
These things aside though I did enjoy the film and it was jumpy at certain points so all in all I am glad that I saw it. I think however that I can only really recommend this for a rental, it has very limited re-watch value.