Crocodile
2000Dir. Tobe Hooper
A group of teenaged friends having a party on a boat are menaced by a giant crocodile. Written by Adam Gierasch and Jace Anderson (who also wrote Toolbox Murders and co-wrote Dario Argento's Mother of Tears), Crocodile is a low budget, by the numbers creature feature. While it certainly has the potential to be a grimy, taut throwback to exploitation flicks of the 80s, particularly with Tobe Hooper directing, it sadly emerges as more of a ripple, rather than the tide of terror it could have been. Featuring a buffed and polished cast of thirty-somethings playing teens, and some very tedious dialogue and partying scenes, the screenplay paints the characters with the broadest of strokes. Sure, they’re having fun, but we just aren’t invited to care, even remotely, about them. When they steal crocodile eggs, we know their fates are sealed, so it doesn’t seem to matter if we still can’t tell them apart. Brief sojourns to other parts of the bayou where we see the crocodile attack other people, also fail to muster any tension. There is some humour in the scene where a couple of ‘rednecks’ fishing in a restricted area and discussing ‘cock-sucking animal rights hippy bullshit’ get eaten before the croc pushes their truck into the lake, disposing of the evidence… Clever croc.
During the camp-fire scene the teens discuss an old, abandoned hotel in the middle of the bayou. Apparently, the giant crocodile scared away all the tourists and the owner of the hotel went insane. This is revealed to have never happened, but it definitely sounds like a more interesting premise for a film than Crocodile. It also sounds quite like Tobe Hooper's earlier film, Eaten Alive aka Death Trap, Horror Hotel, Starlight Slaughter. Something I hoped Crocodile might resemble in execution and tone. A good old-fashioned schlock-fest. Hooper attempts to create tension as the teens party and the audience are treated to glimpses of ‘something lurking in the water.’ He even throws in some POV ‘croc-vision’ camerawork. There’s too much reliance on cheap CGI though for these moments to have any sort of impact. We see too much, too soon, and then too much all the time. There’s no mystery, no build up of dread, no surprises. The poorly rendered CGI beast doesn’t really convince, either.
The crocodile attacks then come thick and fast and happen as follows: Character stands too close to water. Giant crocodile snaps them up. It’s as quick and tensionless as that. Tension even fails to materialise when the teens discover a severed arm and realise a couple of their friends are missing. The only time Hooper offers us a glance of promise, and a nice little throwback to his earlier work, is in the scene featuring a creepy Gator Farm. The production design is brimming with all manner of grotesque props, grimy skulls, filthy detritus and that unmistakable hint of a sweltering, stifling Texas Chain Saw Massacre atmosphere. When the characters arrive at Bob’s Convenience store you almost hope that Leatherface greets them at the door. There is also some unsettling talk about crocodile attacks, ‘death rolls’, humans being reduced to ‘flappin’ bits of meat’, and an interesting attempt to mythologize the giant beast. Sadly, none of this can elevate Crocodile to anything above tedious.
