Film Review Black Water

FILM REVIEW – BLACK WATER (2007) A stark, nerve shredding and sometimes genuinely terrifying horror film, based loosely on real events.  Three young touring Australians, one of them pregnant, go touring in the Northern territories and end up trapped in a mangrove swamp by a very patient, malevolent and persistent salt-water crocodile.  There are many silly croc films and Jaws derivative shark films, often using ludicrous CGI. Black Water minimizes any such trickery and mostly blends footage of real crocodiles perfectly into the very well performed human drama.  Directors David Nerlich & Andrew Trauki have created a classic. The acting is naturalistic, giving the film a powerful documentary feel.  Much of the film features the three leading players stuck in a tree over the shallow swamp water wondering what to do. Their boat guide has been picked off and killed already. The capsized boat is tantalizingly close. The trees themselves might let them reach land with a few patches of water to wade or swim through and a final wide water dash.  No one knows where he or she is so rescue seems unlikely. The swamp water is undrinkable. They have no food. There are some incredible mood setting moments, such as when it goes dark and they hear the croc crunching the bones of an earlier human victim echoing round their tree.  The croc sometimes surfaces and simply stares at them. The closing battle as Maeve Dermody takes on the croc on a narrow mud bank gets a little melodramatic, but stays nevertheless incredible well done, and the final moments are very poignant.  There are no contrived twists planted here – just a quiet sense of sorrow and respect for human courage. Like Open Water this is a film about real ordinary people facing unimaginable but very simple danger from nature red in tooth and claw, rather than a preposterous CGI spectacle. You won’t see massive explosions or crocs tearing helicopters apart here – and yet your nerves may take some time to settle down once the ordeal is over. The cast of four, bar, for a few extras and crowd actors in early scenes, handle their roles brilliantly, with the main party of endangered tourists capturing a sense of shock and creeping terror perfectly. The cinema photography captures the beauty and danger of the swamps well, though it was mostly filmed near Sidney rather than in the Northern Territories. The film on the International movie Database http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816436/

Arthur Chappell