Review - Ain't It Cool News
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/37792
Okay, well there's another movie coming to DVD this week called ROGUE. It was midnight meat trained onto a mere 10 screens in the US so to us it might as well be DTV. The cover just shows a giant bloody crocodile mouth along with two other "don't even consider watching this crap" signs: the Dimension Extreme logo and a giant "UNRATED" stamped under the title WITH BLOOD DRIPPING! I mean, can you even imagine how NOT rated this *beep* is, there is BLOOD DRIPPING OFF OF THE DESCRIPTION OF THE RATING! WHICH IN THIS CASE IS NOT A RATING AT ALL BUT IN FACT THE LACK OF A RATING! WITH BLOOD! HOLY *beep*!share
What you have here is one of those covers designed to ward off the people who would enjoy the movie and attract the people who would not. This could definitely be R-rated, it's hardly a gorefest at all, it's not "extreme," and it's too bad the Weinsteins didn't let someone with taste and competence of some kind buy it. If those pricks had taken a 90 minute break from ruining everything they would've seen that it's not some *beep* CGI bloodfest, it's actually a very well-made Australian suspense thriller from Greg Mclean, director of WOLF CREEK. Definitely not something they would be interested in.
I know WOLF CREEK is a divisive movie. To me it's one of the better horror movies of recent years despite the anticlimactic ending, to most critics it's the most shocking and amoral filth that has ever been put on film, to some of my buddies it's just not very good. But even zero-stars Roger Ebert admitted it was well directed so hey, how 'bout if this guy does a movie about a big crocodile instead of a murderer? Will that appease you guys? Or do you think it will give crocodiles ideas?
I don't know about you but when I think "giant crocodile movie" I think crappy photography of some ugly swamp location, some bad actors, and way too many shots of a really bad CGI croc. This is the opposite. Believe it or not I think some people would enjoy it just for the photography and scenery. This has got to be the best use of HD in a horror movie to date because it looks like Attenborough's PLANET EARTH series. The story follows a tour boat down a river in the northern territory of Australia, and they work in all this amazing footage of animals, insects and incredible natural landscapes.
Instead of trying to make everything fast and noisy like so many youths do, McClean has an old school cinematic feel. I was hooked before anything even happened, just from the dialogue-free opening minutes of star Michael Vartan (21st century Luke Perry) getting out of a bus in the middle of nowhere, smoking a cigarette and walking into a little tavern with gory croc attack newspaper clippings on the wall. This guy is a travel writer, but not an adventurer. A professional tourist. This has some of the same themes as WOLF CREEK: tension between locals and tourists, and the natural beauty and spookiness of Australia.
Vartan goes on this tour boat, and just as they're about to turn back and head home somebody spots a flare. They go further down the river than they should to check it out and get attacked and stranded by this giant crocodile. Actually I should say large crocodile, because this one is 7 meters long and Mclean informs us on the extras that there is a real one somewhere that's 7.5 meters. They use the metric system in Australia, by the way, I don't know how many feet that is but it's alot in my opinion.
The croc is kind of like JAWS, he is mostly a menacing unseen presence. Usually when he eats somebody (which is surprisingly often) it happens so quick you barely see it. Later you do get a good look at him and there's enough animatronics and restrained enough animation that it looks pretty real. They make him move like a real animal, this is not like those speed fiend CGI gators in ERASER.
You know, this could've easily been retooled into DISNEY'S THE JUNGLE CRUISE. It looks like the same boat and everything. But then they would've had to have Eddie Murphy or somebody as the captain instead of the lovely Radha Mitchell.
Mclean gets some great suspense out of the different escape plans they come up with. There were times that the sudden devouring of characters off camera without much mourning started to stretch the realism, and James Cameron's homie Sam Worthington's instant flip from *beep* to hero seemed a little drastic. But every time I thought it might be losing its steam suddenly something would happen that would make me say "Oh *beep* It's a very tense movie.
And you know it's not just that it's an effective thriller, it also has these little touches here and there that you just don't expect in a large to giant crocodile picture. Like there's this character Russell, played by an unrecognizable John Jarrat (the killer from WOLF CREEK, now meek and wearing a fake belly). When he gets on the boat he has two tickets, but he's by himself. He doesn't really explain it and you wonder what that's all about. He's very quiet. Later, when they're all enjoying the beauty of nature and *beep* and he thinks nobody's looking he takes out a small urn and pours some ashes over the side. Clearly his loss is an important part of where he's coming from as a character, but they never have him talk about it directly, and the little girl on the boat is the only one who even finds out about it.