BETWEEN A CROC AND A HARD PLACE...
AS CINEMAS BEGIN TO REOPEN, LOOKS AT WHAT’S ON THE BIG SCREEN, INCLUDING THE HORROR FLICK BLACK WATER: ABYSS
THRILL-SEEKERS get far more than they bargain for in director Andrew Traucki’s bloodthirsty, waterlogged horror, which has the misfortune of surfacing in the wake of yesteryear’s infinitely superior woman-versus-alligator nail-biter, Crawl.
Set in the lush forests of Northern Australia, Black Water: Abyss contrives to trap five unfortunate souls below ground in a rapidly flooding cave with a voracious apex predator that hunts by vibrations in the water.
“Crocs are territorial. He’s not gonna be happy ‘til we’re all gone,” handily explains one thinly sketched character in Ian John Ridley and Sarah Smith’s script, which struggles to find a pleasing balance between edge-of-seat scares and heart-wrenching drama.
They follow the lead of Ridley Scott’s masterclass in sustained tension, Alien, and capsize gender stereotypes to promote female characters when the going gets tough.
The dimly lit, subterranean setting should allow Traucki to slowly crank up tension and conceal surprise attacks from his reptilian menace.
However, it’s painfully obvious when cast are poised to depart in a grisly fashion and we are braced far in advance for a creature to leap out of the water and clamp its jaws around a torso to a symphony of reverberating screams and crunching bones.
Gung-ho thrill-seeker Eric (Luke Mitchell) and his level-headed girlfriend Jennifer (Jessica Mcnamee) invite good friends Yolanda (Amali Golden) and Viktor (Benjamin Hoetjes) to join them on an expedition to a remote, uncharted cave system. Travel journalist Viktor, who is used to making up articles from the comfort of a hotel room, is concerned about the potential risks.
“I thought you said going into remission made you want to live life to the full?” calmly argues his girlfriend Yolanda. “Don’t you want to experience something new?”
The plucky quartet are joined by Eric’s friend Cash (Anthony J Sharpe), who stumbled upon the cave while searching for missing Japanese trekkers.
A tropical storm blows in from the north shortly after the group abseil into the mouth of the cave and stumble upon a subterranean lake.
As rain lashes down, a nearby river floods its banks and Eric, Jennifer, Yolanda, Viktor and Cash are trapped below ground.
The disoriented adventurers find a potential escape route blocked by at least one crocodile, setting in motion a bloodthirsty battle royale between terrified human interlopers and fleshhungry reptiles.
Black Water: Abyss is a predictable survival thriller, which splish-splashes through confidently staged set-pieces.
Scriptwriters Ridley and Smith refuse to wedge tongues in cheek when characters loudly tease impending doom – “I don’t like the look of this”, “No-one knows we’re down here, right?” – or when they engineer a hilarious finale ripped out of the Jaws playbook.
Mcnamee and Golden are spunky damsels in deluged distress, who cope well with the gruelling physical demands of their underwritten roles. unit, taking on the world side by side after Minna’s mother, celebrated singer Karen Mitchles (Alberte Winding), abandons them to chase her musical dreams.
The relationship is threatened by the arrival of John’s new partner Helene (Karen Ardiff) and her selfish, social media-obsessed daughter Jenny (Emma Jenkins).
Spiteful Jenny makes everyone’s lives a misery and threatens to have Minna’s beloved pet hamster sent to an animal shelter.
That night, Minna escapes harsh reality in her sleep and the girl discovers that her slumbering fantasies are created on a hand-built and painted set each night by a dreambuilder called Gaff (Luke Griffin) and his army of dream-bots.
Minna learns she can gatecrash other dreams and the girl resolves to teach selfie-snapping arch-nemesis Jenny a lesson.