Rogue

Yesterday I saw the film "Rogue"...here are some words about it:
The arrogant Journalist Pete McKell joins a boat safari in the Outbacks of Australia. The film begins with beautiful photos of the breathtaking nature there and it could also be the beginning of a nature-documentary.

The characteres in this film are being described and there is the attractive captain of the boat, "Kate", as well as some very special and wacky persons as the tourists on this boat safari. They all want to see crocodiles and it does not take long until they see the first big ones. For some reason they run ashore of a small island in the middle of the big river, the boat is wrecked, and now they are searching for a way to leave the island before high tide comes in. Unfortunately this river seems to be the district of a monstrous crocodile and it does not take long until croco has caught its first victims from the stranded tourist group.

Even if the plot sounds somehow silly, it is entertaining. There are a several reasons for that. It is not a long film, just under 90 minutes and the producing director did not make the big mistake to oversize the crocodile. His crocodile is big, but not gigantic, intelligent, but still an animal. And most of all, which is extremely important, the computer animated crocodile looks like real!

There are some scenes that made me smile though: After the first 2 people have been caught by the crocodile, there does not seem to be any real mourning amongst the rest of the grup, not even the relatives seem to be really shocked.
Building up a suspense curve or rising the tension slowly did not really work here. No wonder, anyone who looks at this film can imagine what will happen. The story of a monstrous animal threatening human beings is so old and in any new movie of this kind it is only interesting HOW the story has been converted in to a movie.
The final fight scene between the main actors and the croco is silly, implausible and unbelievable...fortunately it takes not too much of the film, and hey, this ain't a documentary.

Watching this film was not a waste of time for me. This is an unpretentious, technically solid produced animal-horror movie about a group of tourists being threatened by a crocodile. It is holding back too many violent and/or splatter scenes and presents some really atmospheric views of nature.
If you make it to the end-credits, you will even listen to the funny song of "Never Smile At A Crocodile"