Crocodile Swarm (2023)

Crocodile Swarm (2023)

Directed, written and produced by Tyler James. The guy must have really believed in his film!
It’s a shame, because I’m already wishing him to find another job, retrain and stop doing harm to cinema.

It’s always hard to tell whether a film is decent, a B-movie, a Z-movie, whether it’s going to appeal to dinosaur fans or not! It seems to me that to appreciate a dreck, there has to be at least some humour. Here, that’s not what the film is full of.

As for the special effects, I don’t know if it’s a tradition to always have a first scene where you doubt the quality. Sometimes you have to see several of these scenes to know what you’re dealing with. It’s not always obvious. Are we going to be in a Jaws (1975) or in all things Sharknado, Lake Placid vs. Anaconda? It’s worth noting, though, that my favourite crocodile movie is probably the very first Lake Placid, back in 1999.

The dialogue is pretty bad and the pacing is awful. Which means that in order to respond to lines. You first have to deal with incomprehensible silences before you get the rest of the conversation.

I think you’ve guessed it, but Crocodile Swarm is a sort of failed The Descent and The Cave (both 2005), but with crocodiles this time! It’s bound to bring to mind Black Water: Abyss (2020) too, but much less well. The idea might have seemed interesting or hilarious, depending on your degree of sensitivity. But this film is a complete failure!

Being a good audience member, rather nice and good-humoured, I’m going to say that the actors play well for about forty minutes. After that, there’s very little to salvage. It’s a real pain to see actresses not only acting badly, but also playing the role of a pain in the arse.

The first group of people are attacked. Then a second group tries to save the survivors of the first. Coco Taylor, another English actress, who is in the second group, is probably the only one with any real charisma here. But we don’t see much of her, as she’s one of the first victims.

The posters and covers of this kind of film never live up to their promises. We’d really like to feel the fear that is drawn on these images and not sigh with boredom throughout the viewing.

Lots of ridiculous moments: 1) a woman gets her leg bitten several times, but her sister tells her to run as fast as she can!

2) A crocodile walks past two women lying on the ground, but doesn’t see them. One of them proudly says that you shouldn’t look them in the eye, because they take that as a challenge.

I don’t think a crocodile that comes up from behind or sees someone in the water is going to check if its victim is challenging it with his gaze!

3) I can’t believe there’s the old gag of putting a stick in a creature’s mouth so that it can’t shut up.

That’s it!
Even if I’ve wasted my time, this kind of review saves me some, since it doesn’t take too long to write. But there’s also the satisfaction of sacrificing myself (without having to throw myself to the crocodiles), in order to preserve your time, because, in case you still don’t know, it’s very precious!

0,5