Crocodile (2000)

Plot Outline: A group of teenagers take a boat trip on a remote lake only to be confronted by a giant crocodile who wants revenge for them destroying it's eggs.

The Review: If you've seen one of those "monster on the loose" flicks, then you'll have seen this too. Everything is so unoriginal. For a start the plot and the way the story unfolds isn't anything new. All of these films follow a same thread, including putting in as many unnecessary sub-plots and sub-characters as possible. There is every clichéd character in here: dumb jock, the prankster, the slut, the arguing couple, the snobby one, etc. There's some backwoods hicks and some daft fishermen to round off the characters. The teen cast look to be having a good time to start with but they run out of their charm quickly and you end up wishing they would feed themselves to the croc. Thankfully most of the people are here to act as croc fodder. The body count is pretty high and there is some gore and severed limbs. But for a 15 rating, you're not going to get much more. The croc attacks don't look very good but the crocodile itself obviously had limited movement. In some scenes the crocodile looks pretty good and realistic but in others it comes off as the fake life-size model that it is. The CGI doesn't impress and it seems to change it size constantly depending on what the plot wants it to do next. On the plus side, Hooper does manage to put in a few scares here and there which did have me jump. But since the rest of the film is so run-of-the-mill, they don't have the impact that they should.

Final Verdict: Crocodile is just further proof that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a one-off and Tobe Hooper was never the great horror director that he was made to be. The film is cheap and cheerful and provides an ok timewaster but Hooper should be way above making this sort of junk flick. Unfortunately he continues his dramatic slide into obscurity.

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