Croc Rock: "Black Water: Abyss" offers up creature-feature satisfaction

Black Water: Abyss (2020)

98 min.

Release Date: August 7, 2020 (On-Demand)

The “Black Water” brand hasn’t exactly entered the pop-culture lexicon, but 2007’s sobering, no-nonsense Aussie low-budgeter “Black Water” was one of the more seriously solid Killer Croc movies (and allegedly based on true events) that wasn’t made for the Syfy channel. With no real connection to its predecessor—yes, there are people, one of whom is newly pregnant, and a crocodile marking its territory—follow-up “Black Water: Abyss” is more of a remake, directed by Andrew Traucki (one-half of the first film’s directing team), with higher production values. Even with a mostly perfunctory script, it makes no apologies and no claims to be anything more than it is: a credible slasher film with a crocodile doing the slashing.

Jennifer (Jessica McNamee) and boyfriend Eric (Luke Mitchell), a Chris Hemsworth-looking adrenaline junkie, get together with another couple, Yolanda (Amali Golden) and Viktor (Benjamin Hoetjes), for an adventure in Northern Australia. When they hook up with adventurous fifth wheel Cash (Anthony J. Sharpe), the group decides to check out an uncharted cave system that has them rappelling into a hole and reaching a subterranean lake. A torrential tropical storm shifts the rocks and seals off the passageway that was their only exit, and the water continues to flood in and rise. Of course, they will have to enter the water in order to find a new exit, but what do you know, there’s an apex predator waiting for tonight’s dinner. To drown or to be torn to shreds by a croc, that is the question.

Taking to the caves in lieu of a swamp like its predecessor, “Black Water: Abyss” gets plenty of mileage out of its claustrophobic location. If this were a relationship drama, it would be absolutely nothing special, but add a crocodile and tight, watery spaces underground, and what it does do, it does really well. The baseline script by Ian John Ridley and Sarah Smith does efficiently set up the characters and their relationships before making them potential croc food, and there is just enough human drama of the soapy variety to heighten the stakes even more. There is the wish that we cared slightly more for the people involved, but Jessica McNamee (2018’s “The Meg”) makes Jennifer the most sympathetic and Amali Golden’s Yolanda gets to be the newly pregnant one. With the exception of one egregious mistake one of the human survivors makes for a killer climax, the decisions these characters make are crucial and not dumb; they have no other choice but to get in that damn murky water where they can’t see below. 

While no means comparing “Black Water: Abyss” to “Jaws,” director Andrew Traucki does take his time in showing the croc, who when given his (sorry, or her) close-up is pretty frightening and not CG-phony. Traucki is an expert in making his audience wait patiently and unbearably tense at the same time. As with close calls and one particularly torturous moment of calm that just holds on a single character repeatedly checking under the water, the circumstances are made suspenseful almost at all times. 

For those who ate up 2019’s “Crawl” and “47 Meters Down: Uncaged,” “Black Water: Abyss” should satisfy a less-demanding moviegoer who still expects a certain level of skill and fun in their sharks/alligators/crocodiles-run-amok motion pictures. It’s just not the summer movie season without a little creature-feature entertainment that does what it says on the box. Suffice to say, after watching “The Descent” and now “Black Water: Abyss,” spelunking in any cave system is completely out of the question if it wasn’t already.

Grade: B -