Black Water

Black Water (2007) starring Diana Glenn, Maeve Dermody, Andy Rodoreda, Ben Oxenboul, and Fiona Press.

Before...this was a spur of the moment watch. Never heard of it before, never heard of any of the actors before and so took the plunge with the hope that something interesting and exciting would result. The film sounded intriguing, and though I haven't seen Open Water (which it is likened too) (the concept of getting left behind at a dive sounds too real and scary for my liking) I heard that it got good scariness ratings from people who saw it.

Married couple, Grace (Glenn), Adam (Rodoreda) and her sister, Lee (Dermody), have just spent Christmas with their mother (Press) and have decided to take a long trip back home. Along the way they stop off at a fishing station. They rent out a guide (Oxenboul) and a boat to do some fishing in the mangrove swamps of Northern Australia. All does not go to plan, however, when the boat is overturned and they have shelter in a tree in order to survive.

So where to start...the issue with this film is the pace of the film. The director of the film at times feels confused as to when he should keep the pace going and when he should slow the pace down to a crawl. I will freely admit that at 2 points I fast forwarded slightly until something actually happened. There are times when the slow pace is used to great effect to build tension and develop fear in the watcher, however too often David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki decided to use the slow pace route, which frustrated me.

This is a low-budget Australian horror movie, a la Wolf Creek. It is not a narrative, there are no long flowing dialogues here, it is all very natural and realistic. It is harsh and brutal, and this only helps to lift itself out of the mediocrity that I initially slid it into within the first 10 minutes of watching. I feared it would go the same way as most other low budget films and would fill out the film to pad it out. However the director trusts his instincts and is able to use the simplistic plot to create a decent film.

The acting in this is very understated, so much so that you almost feel as if you are watching a documentary. That is what brings the film up for me, the raw appeal of the actors means that we are getting very natural performances from them. The emotions that they show feel very real and it is because of their work you feel genuine sympathy for them.

The other thing that I applauded the directors for is the need not to immediately leap towards creating CGI monster crocs or even CGI normal-sized crocs. The directors have crudely edited together clips of real crocodiles to make the action work, and although done crudely it works very effectively. The attack scenes interspersed with the human focused dramatic scenes works really well and it is a credit to the directors that they wer able to do this.

The other thing that impressed me about this movie was the genuine fear and tension that was running through my body throughout the film. With minimal budget, a small set and only 5 actors they have created a movie that stands up very well to a lot of the big money horror films that are out there. In future, I think I will be looking out for more Australian horror films, as that is two low budget horrors that I have thought were fantastically tense and fear-inducing.

Overall I was very impressed with the film. I think all that would need to be done to improve it would be to sort the pace of the film out in some places. Other than that, this is a great film that is well worth a watch, if you can find it that is! This is why I have given the film...

★★★★☆