Rogue

Lacks Bite, 18 July 2010

Author: gary-444 from United Kingdom


*** This review may contain spoilers ***


An entertaining enough cheesy monster flick which suffers a bit from an identity crisis. As a straight forwards action, adventure, cod- horror, it isn't bad, but when it tries to move into a fully blown monster pic it fails miserably. The setting and scenery however are magnificent, Director Greg McLean, previously of "Wolf Creek" knows how to make the most of the magnificent Australian landscape.

It opens with strong overtones of "Black Water", a previous "Crocs after tourists" tale, but with a much bigger budget. Radha Mitchell, played by Kate Ryan, provides the glamour interest and the tourist boat which sets out to explore a salt water gorge is laden with satisfyingly diverse characters. The initial croc attack is well handled, and the jeopardy of them finding themselves on a tidal island soon to be flooded by the incoming tide works well. The drama and tension exceed that of "Black Water" – but then it all goes wrong in the final act.

A showdown occurs in the "Crocs lair" where the bodies of its victims have been dragged. It becomes preposterous. The set is expensive and well staged, but the premise is ridiculous and the genuine tension that previously existed on the tidal island dissolves into disbelieving laughter. At the heart of this is a truism, and that is that "rogue croc" stories probably only have around 60minutes worth of entertaining screen time in them, and by trying to stretch them out to a feature length 90 minutes, the material is inevitably stretched too thinly.

McLean foolishly denies us the customary horror genre "underwear shot" of the lovely Kate and the tenor of the film generally is more suited to a children's matinée than adult horror with some salty language actually jarring. Sam Worthington plays , Neil Kelly, the male hero, very well in a part which is curiously underwritten by McLean. But there is a limit to how well you can act opposite a mainly submerged rogue crocodile.

So overall it's a bit of a dud, but with some redeeming features