Director: Andrew Traucki
Writer: John Ridley, Sarah Smith (Screenplay)
Starring: Jessica McNamee, Luke Mitchell, Amali Golden, Anthony J Sharpe, Benjamin Hoetjes
Plot: Five friends exploring a remote cave system in Northern Australia find themselves threatened by a hungry crocodile.
Tagline – Descend into Fear
Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Verdict: Poor Creature Feature
Story: Black Water: Abyss starts as five friends Cash (Sharpe), Jennifer (McNamee), Eric (Mitchell), Yolanda (Golden) and Viktor (Hoetjes) head to a new cave system that Cash has found, once inside the friends explore, discover a beautiful underwater lake.
Things take turn for the worse when a storm starts to get the lake flooded, before they learn they are trapped in the room with rising water and a killer crocodile, in what becomes a battle to survive and escape.
Thoughts on Black Water: Abyss
Characters – Jennifer is the lead of the friends, she isn’t interested in going and has started to see her relationship with Eric going downhill and once inside the cave, she finds herself not wanting to stay get in the water even though it could be the rescue plan. She is also the character with the least about her. Eric leads the exploration taking charge of when things go wrong, showing his leadership skills. Yolanda and Viktor are a couple that have more about their relationship with Yolanda secretly being pregnant showing they both have more to fight for, while Cash is the slacker type figure in the lives, who takes them to the cave, though he isn’t used to this environment.
Performances – When it comes to performances, the cast really don’t have much to work with, making it very hard to any of them to make an impact in the film.
Story – The story here follows the five cavers that become trapped in an underwater cave with rising water and a killer crocodile looking to defend its territory. This is a simple enough story, that gives us thin character development, which does seem to focus on the personal dramas over the actual survival, while we have a moments where people go on a plan to escape, when the others just go on to do something more stupid, this is more frustrating than anything.
Action/Horror – The action does have realistic attacks, only they are horrendously shot, with the horror relying on the music for the attacks.
Settings – We spend the film inside the cave, which does give us a contained location, with even more peril for the film.
Scene of the Movie – The crocodile attacks spin are at least realistic.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – Focusing on the characters too much with their personal dramas.
Final Thoughts – This is a poor creature feature that just doesn’t make us care for the characters and gives us poor shot attack sequences.
Overall: Sloppy Creature Feature.
