Review of Rogue (2007) by Hilmar A — 04 Sep 2011

Rogue (2007) - Review.

Tagline: "How fast can you swim?".

After years of (mostly) ineffective "creature features" and monster movies that are essentially rip-offs of both Jaws (1975) and Alien (1979), the two most revered killer creature movies of all time, comes this surprise of a movie. Brilliantly paced and quite scary, Rogue is, as its poster shows us, about a huge killer crocodile which, inevitably, kills people. Set in the outbacks of 'Down Under' Australia, a group of tourists receive a guide on a small boat down a large river to observe Australia's beautiful wildlife. But on the tour they suddenly discover that someone is firing up emergency flares around a bend further up the river. Much to the dismay to the tourists, they have to respond to the apparent distress call and see what they can do to help. But something is lurking beneath the murky depths of the river and they soon find themselves in the territory of a vicious predator.

Rogue won't score any points for originality but it gets the suspense just right. It takes its time to introduce its characters; some of which are indeed stereotypes and/or clichés, but are fortunately acted quite convincingly.

Again and again, I find myself hearkening back to Spielberg's Jaws and Scott's Alien, who have clearly become the benchmarks of killer creature movies - defined the genre, if you will. Rogue uses the 'Jaws Rule' in which less is always more. The crocodile, massive and lumbering when on land, but agile and swift underwater, is skilfully obscured by the dark of night and is as if but a shadow moving when least expected. Seeing as this is a low-budget feature, one wouldn't normally expect the effects used to portray the croc to be all that impressive. But they are, and it's in CG most of the time. At all times I felt it carried itself with a feel of proper weight with its lumbering and massive size, and it behaved quite realistically, like a real crocodile.

In addition to great pacing and the reluctance to show us too much of the creature, the soundtrack is eerie, which is something I feel has been missing from many modern horror/thrillers, and it reminded me of older scary movies.

The cast is comprised of unknowns, although I was surprised to see Sam Worthington (now best known from James Cameron's Avatar - 2009) in a minor role as Neil, and despite it being a rather typical role in a movie like this, he was better than I expected him to be; rather good, actually. But the main character, Pete McKell, an American journalist, is played by Michael Vartan. Radha Mitchell is the tour guide sailing the small boat up the river. I could mention the rest of the cast but they aren't really the main concern of the movie. Rather it's the suspense that is in the limelight. Director Greg McLean sure knows how to rivet up the suspense factor in this movie. As mentioned before, he cleverly employs the 'less is more' tactic and consistently surprises with having the crocodile attack when least expected, and even then he doesn't go for cheap sudden "Boo!" scares or the clichéd means of letting us think we're safe only to suddenly provide us with a jump scare. Although few movies are able to bring the sense of endangerment as well as Jaws or Alien did it, Rogue at least endeavours to provide such a feeling and often succeeds, if not quite as effectively as either of the aforementioned classics, though (which isn't to say it isn't scary, it's really just somewhat unfair to expect scares equal to Jaws or Alien).

The only actual problem I had with this movie, aside from some clichéd characters (which, in itself, wasn't that big of a deal), is that it could have been a bit longer. I felt it ended appropriately but that there could have been, perhaps, even more drawn out scenes of suspense, since McLean does it so well here.

Verdict:

Hardly original or all that inventive, and slightly too short, Rogue still proves itself a worthy addition among "creature features." The performances of the actors are quite good and the creature effects are surprisingly well achieved. All in all, Rogue gets its job done and is a nod to the 'less is more' approach when it comes to portraying scary creatures.