This movie looks bad ass. A few people at the company, and myself are huge monster/horror movie buffs. This sounds like a winner. I just finished watching Frakenfish today actually. It’s a must watch. It was surprisingly good!
Good lord, you must be joking.
But if we’re turning this into a general horror movie recommendation thread, I HIGHLY recommend The Signal.
The Signal does sort of have an official Qt3 recommendation, but this is a good place to recommend it in that maybe someone will watch it knowing nothing about it. As with many good horror movies, that’s the best way to go in.
Also, that Signal trailer is good in that it doesn’t give away too much, but it’s terrible in that it does nothing to convey the unique tone of the movie. I give it a 7.8 on the 7-9 scale.
-TomI thought this trailer worked a lot better, but it’s so dark it’s hard to see:
Ooh, that was awesome, McHank. Love the use of the Lou Reed song!
-TomJust watched this last night based on this thread. I agree, good stuff. It had just the right pacing and just the right length. I could nitpick a couple shots here and there (the ear reveal could have been better and the croc chasing Leigh the first time had a weirdly bad shot on it) but the vertical leap and the jump scare when Leigh was in the boat later were both awesome.
And I agree with Tom, I loved the croc just hanging around cause he just wanted them to stick around longer for when he needed another meal.
Hehe… yeah, well the build up was awesome… what is that bubbling or something? but then when it appeared, the dramatic music was a bit too much. It would have been far creepier, at least to me, to just have no music, just her reaction.
Small nitpick, as I said though.
I just watched it. Yeah, the ear wasn’t all that scary, honestly. What was scary were the shots where they are right above the water, walking, trying to make it somewhere. The score and shots of the camera looking left, right, all around set those up beautifully.
I was actually a bit disturbed by the part when the husband’s body was floating and they say “goodbye” to him. That actress did a terrific job there. In fact I don’t I heard an out of place or bad line the whole film. The young girl repeating “I’m coming Gracie” was done with an edge of madness effect too.
All in all great film, a great indie movie. This absolutely shows you don’t see gore and a huge budget to have a suspenseful, great horror/thriller movie.
Just watched it. Totally good stuff. Worth a thread bump, if nothing else!
Just watched Black Water on Netflix Instant, (mainly bumping to say yes, it’s on Netflix Instant, since people seem to be having trouble finding it in the thread for The Reef) and yeah, it was as awesome as people have said.
The ear thing just seemed goofy to me. It was like the crocodile killed Brundle-Fly. In my mind, what would have been scariest would have been seeing the tip of a nose and an open mouth float to the surface, open in a silent scream. It would imply the rest of a corpse or at least a severed head below the surface, but not show the whole thing.
But then, I don’t actually make movies, so what do I know?
I saw this recently, was not that impressed.
It has that element of characters being dumb that sort of ruins this kind of movie for me. Spoilers, vague I hope, follow:
Specifically the “we HAVE to get the boat right now!” argument. Um, no you don’t. You’re safe where you are for now. Thirst and hunger are not problems at that point. There is a giant croc in the water that has already killed someone who was in that same boat. Why is it that now is the time to go for the boat? Because it’ll be harder later? Haha, what the hell does that mean?
Finally, it cheats on the rules for the croc. One character escapes from the croc’s mouth not once but twice!
The only bit of dumbness that really jumped out at me was the characters always trying to be stealthy, moving very slowly and carefully when they were in the water. Look people, it’s been established that the croc’s going to detect you no matter how stealthy you think you are, so just go as fast as you can and don’t worry about how much noise you make.
I think this movie needed a slight restructuring to work a lot better.
The first death needed to be on their first attempt to get back to the boat. If someone has already been killed immediately upon entering the water, then it’s stupid for anyone to come up with a plan that says “First we go into the water and go to the boat…”.
Also, the movie had a perfectly good reason to get them out of the trees- the jumping croc. If they had that scene immediately after they all get in the trees, there is the perfect motivation for them to feel they must do something now(ie run for the boat). Instead it comes much later, when the characters are already completely desperate.
O.k., after watching The Reef, I tracked down Black Water, for a lot of the same reasons. I really love the “difficult choices” aspects of these movies - the director/writer really does a great job of putting relatively likable characters in spots where they have to choose between a really bad choice, and another really bad choice – forcing viewers to undertake the same contemplation/choice - what would YOU do in that situation. Great stuff - not contrived, no obvious answers, and leads to lengthy post-viewing debates.
The director also does an amazing job inserting real wildlife footage seamlessly into the movie - obviously that limits the amount of time you get to see the “villain,” but it’s so much more effective than goofy CG or inexpensive animatronics (high end animatronics are probably best, but they’re more expensive than the budgets for these movies).
[spoilers]
They must have used some effects though, given the ending, but I couldn’t figure out how they did the “scalp” bit.
I also think I actually liked the Reef better – there were a few cheesy things in this one that weren’t in the Reef, like the tour guide essentially just disappearing as soon as the boat was overturned, and the croc getting into the boat that pretty blonde girl was bailing looked a bit artificial. But I also didn’t find these characters any more likable than the ones in the Reef – I liked both sets of characters, and thought the actors did a very good job in both instances.
The movies are basically the same movie - I find open water nemesis/environment more terrifying, but Black Water gains a lot of points for being more grounded. That said, much of the movie involves people talking while in a tree - even though I found those scenes remarkably tense for the most part, they were also a little draggy, and the “moments of lightness” were a bit painfully scripted, and they’re such an obvious “tell” of something horribly about to happen that I found that tic more annoying the second time through - it’s a horror genre fixture, I guess, but every time there’s a light-hearted dolphin sighting, or people start telling amusing tales, you know there’ll be some bone-crunching within 60 seconds).
Liked 'em both a lot - very cool that krazykroc was involved in this movie, which had remarkable production values for such a micro-budget film. On the Gamespot scale, I give the Reef a 6.6/10 and Black Water a 5.8/10.
Yeah, I didn’t have issues with any of their decisions – they may not have been the best decisions in the circumstances, but they all seemed plausible for these characters in context.
krayzkrok, how was the bullet scene done, if a real croc was used? Actually killed?
I watched this last night with some friends and we loved it. I of course jumped up at the end and pointed at krayzkrok’s name and related his recent crocodiving adventures.
My favorite part is probably the crunchy sounds the girls have to listen to at night, hehe.
When I saw that I realized Frozen ripped that scene off for use with the wolves. That makes me revise my opinion of Frozen and knock it down a notch because THAT was my favorite scene in Frozen.
Amazing job. You have a really cool gig!
I finally watched on Netflix after having it queued for years. I wish I’d gotten to it sooner because it’s so horribly beautiful. (btw, it’ll be removed from Netflix on Feb 1st so get to it if you haven’t yet.)
The characters were so believable that it inspired sympathy, especially the brunette, for reasons discussed up thread. And if going for the boat is dumb then call me a dunce because I would’ve gone for it fairly early on, too. In my case, partly due to a medical condition which could potentially incapacitate me quite quickly if medicine is lost.
The crocodile was also believable although this thread is the only reason I can say that about the jump and bullet scenes.
Overall, the film has a solid feel to it that you rarely get from the genre.
Also, krayzkrok did you know that if you type your name on Bing the suggested additional search terms include both “crocodile expert” and “crocodile expert phone number”? Those suggestions come right after “facebook” and “music teacher” and right before “big gecko” which in turn is followed by “darwin area, australia”. Look out man, people are looking for you! ;)
He’s busy playing Dark Souls, they won’t find him!
But now I have to go watch this since I totally missed the thread previously.