Black Water

After watching Rogue, I've been on a bit of a killer crocodile binge. Lake Placid 2 was unbelievably bad, and my next film on the list, Croc, doesn't look to be much better. But the little Aussie indie Black Water is pretty good. Probably better than Rogue, if only because Rogue gets a little dodgy at the end and Black Water's ending is more realistic. In fact, it's actually real.

Black Water is not technically a giant killer crocodile movie, but is instead a normal killer crocodile movie that is "Based on a True Story." A woman, her husband and her sister decide to take a guided fishing trip in the mangrove swamps of northern Australia while on vacation. They miss the main tour, but the assistant tour guide offers to take them out on his small fishing boat. After finding little success in the normal fishing spots, he takes them to a more remote area of the swamp. They unknowingly enter the territory of a crocodile, who rams the small boat and overturns it. The tourists scramble onto some of the trees growing out of the swamp, but the guide is dead (the movie doesn't make it clear if the guide was killed by the crocodile, or if he was struck by the overturning boat). The rest of the movie takes place in this location as the characters try to get to either the overturned boat, or to the pistol that is on the guide's corpse. Each requires them to get into the water, and the crocodile is still around.

Like Rogue, Black Water lets the crocodile act like a crocodile, concerned more with protecting its territory than with mindless slaughter. Unlike Rogue, the crocodile is not giant, just a regular ol' crocodile (which is still 12-14 feet long). In fact, the crocodile is barely seen. If a crocodile is hunting you, you're not going to see it. And that absence makes the suspense sequences in Black Water more credible. Maybe it's still there, or maybe it left to go do something else. Adding to the fear are the normal sounds of the swamp. Bubbles gurgle to the surface. Water swirls as something moves beneath. Small splashes are heard in every direction? The crocodile, or just fish and dragonflies? The film benefits greatly from its location shooting. During filming, a 14-foot crocodile attacked and made off with one of the cameras. Now that's location shooting. In fact, there is not a single artificial crocodile effect in the film. If there's a crocodile onscreen, it's real. That includes the shots that have humans and a croc in the same frame.

Black Water actually has more in common with Open Water than it does with Rogue or Lake Placid. It's about a group of humans who are stranded in nature and forced to confront the harsh reality that they are no longer the apex animal. I'm naturally predisposed to liking movies where humans have to face off against nature and fail miserably, so I walked away from Black Water very satisfied.

NOTE (and possible spoiler warning): Given that this is based on a true story as told by a witness, you know that at least one person will make it out alive. I give props to Black Water for never indicating which characters are doomed, laying the risks equally upon the whole cast and not bringing any one character to the fore.