Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Taneli Mustonen, Brad Watson
Starring: Athena Strates, Isabelle Bonfrer, Elisha Applebaum, Madalena Aragão,
Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong
The success of the animal attacks/comedy hybrid Cocaine Bear quickly prompted notorious knockoff merchants The Asylum to rush
out their own variation on the theme of a dangerous creature getting
stoned off their face. As its title not so subtly suggests, Meth Gator featured an alligator on meth, which the film posited as making it
far more aggressive. As you'd expect from The Asylum, the scenario was
played with its tongue firmly in cheek.
Gator Creek (or The Bayou as it's known in the US) takes essentially the same starting point
as Meth Gator but attempts to play it with a straight face. When a DEA raid on a
meth lab deep in the Florida swamps results in barrels of meth being
hastily dumped into the water, the local alligator population consumes the
drug and becomes ferocious and athletic as a result.
Directed by Taneli Mustonen and Brad Watson, Gator Creek is the latest offering from Tea Shop Productions, who have
established themselves as specialists in survival thrillers with
the 47 Metres Down franchise and the excellent vertigo-inducing Fall. Gator Creek is an attempt to transfer the template of those movies onto an
alligator attacks flick, so once again we get a group of young women
heading off on an expedition while burdened by recent trauma and
displaying much passive aggression towards one another.
Student Kyle (Athena Strates) is mourning the death of her
brother Jamie (Flynn Barnard) in circumstances that are initially
ambiguous but gradually revealed through flashbacks (though if you've
seen David Bruckner's The Ritual, this backstory will be suspiciously familiar). Along with her best
friends Alice (Madalena Aragão) and Sam (Mohammed Mansaray), and the not so friendly Malika (Elisha Applebaum), who blames her for Jamie's death, Kyle heads
deep into the Everglades to scatter her brother's ashes. When the
rustbucket plane they charter along with a few other passengers crashes
in the swamp, the group discover that the pilot, Frank (Andonis Anthony), kept the flight off the books to save a few quid, and so there won't
be any rescue party arriving any time soon. That's the least of their
problems however, as the crash survivors quickly discover they're deep
in the territory of the meth gators.
Gator Creek finds itself stuck between two very different types of genre
movies. It wants to follow the path of the likes of 47 Metres Down and Alexandre Aja's Crawl and be taken seriously, but it's also aiming to draw in
the Cocaine Bear crowd. The outlandishly silly premise jars with how things
actually play out, as none of this is played for laughs. I'm not sure the
meth subplot actually adds anything, as only wildlife experts would be
likely to quibble at how the alligators behave here. Wouldn't a bunch of
hungry alligators be enough of a threat without being caned on
meth?
The obligatory "trauma" element is especially half-baked here, added as
a lazy way to coerce us into sympathising with our brooding protagonist
Kyle. The flashbacks pop up at oddly random points in the narrative,
often slowing down the action, and there's a moment in the climax when
it would have made sense to insert a reveal that we already got a half
hour earlier.
A British production featuring an international cast, Gator Creek boasts generally decent performances but suffers from some
atrocious attempts at American accents. Strates is compelling as Kyle
but she can't disguise her distinctive South African accent, a shame as
she possesses the sort of star quality that might otherwise make
Hollywood take notice (she's excellent as the sinister storyteller of
2016's A Perfect Enemy). The shoddy writing doesn't help, with characters behaving in a
manner that makes little sense and reacting to the deaths of their loved
ones with all the grief of someone who just dropped a slice of toast on
the floor.
What Gator Creek does have going for it are some badass alligators, which appear
to be an impressive melding of CG and practical effects. There are some
nice shock moments when the creatures snap their jaws into action, and
the bloodshed is proper gnarly at times. But the animal attacks action
is so infrequent that it can practically all be seen in the film's
trailer.
Gator Creek's biggest misstep might be its treatment of the obligatory asshole
character, you know the narcissist who puts everyone else in danger to
save their own hide (think Leslie Nielsen in Day of the Animals or Udo Kier in Snakes on a Plane). As a self-centred British businessman who refuses to turn his phone
off on the plane, thus causing the crash, David Newman knows exactly how to play this, but he's killed off far too
quickly for the film to exploit his potential.
Gator Creek is on UK/ROI VOD
from March 24th.
