Review of Rogue (2007) by Andrei N — 05 May 2009

Really well-made Aussie movie about a boat tour that gets attacked by a gigantic territorial crocodile.

I didn't like the director's first movie, Wolf Creek, so it took me forever to get around to watching this one, but luckily it is a FAR superior movie.

I like how this movie took the time to develop the characters, but not to the point where it was boring, and more then I expected survived the movie, making it truly suspenseful later on as to just who would die and when. It also helped that the acting from everyone, even the minor characters, was great. Adding tot eh realism as well, were random flies hanging on people's faces and flying around that annoyed the characters. Most movies wouldn't have that little bit of realism in there, but this one did, and it really helped portray the setting.

The effects for the crocodile were really good and probably the best I've seen for a large animal since Jurassic Park. While not quite on par with those effects, it does come pretty close.

I did have a couple minor beefs with the movie though. The movie completely switched gears once they got off the little dirt island. We followed all these characters around for three quarters of the movie, then as soon as they get off, we leave them and follow just one single character for the final quarter of the movie, and I didn't like that. It's like they just dropped all the main characters out of the movie for no reason. And while the gore was great, the kills weren't really all that interesting. Every kill except one was the exact same - someone is in the water, someone gets dragged under the water, blood rises. I was expecting to see multiple styles of deaths, so I was a bit dissipointed when only one of them was really any interesting. I also thought that keeping the main girl alive after her totally unexpected near-death attack by the crocodile was a huge cop-out. It would be the equivalent of Radha Mitchell's character having survived in Pitch Black, or the main girl surviving Deep Blue Sea. The attack came just as unexpected as those, except this time the main male character went into the Crocodile's nest to rescue her, and I felt that was a cop-out.

Overall though, I thought this movie was very strong and very well-done and I highly recommend it.