BLACK WATER

I always enjoy finding out when an "animal eats people" movie was “inspired by a true story”. Black Water, a super low budget Australian crocodile movie, was apparently “Inspired by the true story of a crocodile attack in the Northern Territory.” I love that. As if the idea of a crocodile eating a person is a thing that could only arrive in a writer’s brain through a news article. “Oh wow, cop a load of this, you know crocodiles? Yeah, they don’t just eat chicken carcasses dangled in front of them!”

Black Water appears on a lot of lists with titles like Crocodile Movies That Exist or If I Was Forced To Name Ten Australian Horror Movies That You Should Watch These Would Be Them. In these write ups it’s often compared to the much bigger budgeted Rogue which also came out in 2007 and they’ll say that this is the better of the two Aussie crocodile movies. How’s that for a compliment? That’s like telling The Green Hornet, that of all the superhero movies with the word Green in the title that came out in 2011, we prefer you to Green Lantern. Wow! You mean that?! That’s so nice of you to say.

FOR THE RECORD – and this is on the record – I disagree. I think Rogue is the better of the two crocodile movies nobody remembers from 2007! Black Water prides itself on how the crocodiles in the movie were real crocodiles and not a CGI monstrosity. You know what’s fun to watch though? CGI monstrosities. They filmed these crocs in a crocodile reserve and you can tell, there are scenes where it cuts between the actors and the crocodile hunting them and they may well be in different cities.

The movie follows a pregnant woman, Lee (who hasn’t told her boyfriend), her boyfriend Adam (who doesn’t know she’s pregnant), her sister Grace (who does know she’s pregnant) and a tour guide Jim (it is unclear if he knows about the pregnancy) – they all pile into a tiny boat and go on a tour of the mangroves. The boat is overturned, a crocodile comes along, some people die, some people live and you can probably figure out in your heads what order that happens in.

Where would I fit into this low budget movie with a tiny cast? Well, there’s a scene early on in the film where the characters are having some drinks in the pub and the characters play a game of charades. Truly one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen in any movie. Would love to meet a person who has played charades in a pub. Put me in Black Water and pop me on the other side of that room.