Black Water DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

Some movies you just know. You see the cover, and the cheesy artwork, and you know it's going to be craptastic. Sure, you keep an open mind and try to look for some good stuff, but, even though you already knew it without having to see it... you see it anyway, and are right. Hence the case of Black Water.

Right away this sounded like it was trying to "capitalize" on the "success" of Open Water, which I found rather terrible. This one is in Australia with three friends who take off for a vacation and they end up going on this boat ride down the river. That river is crocodile turf, though, and after a croc tips their boat over, and kills their tour guide (the only other person that has a significant speaking line), the three friends Grace (Diana Glen), Lee (Maeve Dermody) and Adam (Andy Rodoreda) scurry up a nearby tree to avoid the grip of the croc and figure out their next move, while the croc swirls around in the waters below.

While the minimalistic style of writers/directors Andrew Traucki and David Nerlich suits this type of film well at times, with hardly any music and a few genuinely jumpy parts at times, it's really pretty damn boring. The whole time it's these people in a tree either arguing about how they got there, or talking about the best way to get out of there. Traucki and Nerlich's dialogue is as putrid as the black water below them and the script as a whole is fireplace fodder, at best. They do indeed show some promise as horror genre directors, though. I know it's a very minor thing, but I just loved the way they had the crocodile slowly emerge from the water each time they appeared (they used all real crocs too, by the way). If they steered clear of writing their own stuff, and picked some solid scripts, they could do some pretty good work in the years to come. If they insist on writing their own stuff though... I wouldn't be that intrigued.

It looks like they did a decent job of casting with Diana Glenn and Maeve Dermody, although Andy Rodoreda isn't that good at all. Glenn and Dermody only show some promise, though, because their performances were hindered so greatly by the atrocious script they were reading from. I'd have to see them in something with a normal script before I made a full judgment, but they seemed to have talent.

Overall, this is 89 minutes you'll never get back, and will desperately want back after you see this. It's a pointless, futile attempt at making a movie that's only gimmick seemed to be the fact that they used all real crocodiles while filming this movie. Maybe that's how they sell things out there in Australia, but this novelty flick is barely worth the package it's housed in.

Not much here. We get some Deleted Scenes that were all worthy of deletion and a Making of Black Water featurette that is just your average, talk-about-the-movie-and-be-happy deal. Ugh. Move along, there's nothing to see here.

The film is presented in the anamorphic widescreen format, in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

Lame-o-rific. Front cover has a person drowning underwater, with a comic-book-like drawing of a croc coming after him, and the title card above. The back his a drawing of the tree with the friends and the croc and the chewed up boat in the background, and a tiny synopsis, tiny special features box along with the billing block and tech specs. Yawn.

Dumb. Boring. Stupid. All sufficient final words for me.