Infierno En El Pantano

After suffering through Skinamarink, one of the most boring horror films I have ever seen, I needed to cleanse my palate, so to speak. The Bayou fits the bill perfectly - it's a cheap and cheerful creature feature with absolutely no pretensions. It does exactly what it says on the tin and is actually better than I expected, with above average CGI for this kind of thing, a smattering of gore and reasonable performances.

Athena Strates plays Kyle, who flies to the everglades with her friends to scatter the ashes of her older brother Jamie (Flynn Barnard). Disaster strikes when the plane experiences engine trouble and ditches in the middle of a swamp, where the alligator population has turned super-aggressive due to the powerful narcotic that was dumped in the water during a raid on an illegal drug factory.

The film obviously won't win any awards for originality, but it's not trying to - it knows exactly what is required of it, moving swiftly along, delivering a few jump scares and a fair bit of suspense. And it doesn't scrimp on the gator action: there's numerous ravenous reptiles, both practical and computer generated, and they put quite a few similarly themed films to shame.

6/10. Worth a go if it's a brainless, no-nonsense bit of fun you're after.

The release year of Infierno En El Pantano (2025) states that it was 2025. Ok, but why on earth is such a movie like this produced in this day-and-age? With an estimated budget of $5 million (unconfirmed) I doubt that they saw a return out of this move.

Madalena Aragão (Alice) reminded me of Kaya Scodelario in her looks, I had to do some searching on that, as it happens, Kaya was in the movie Infierno en la tormenta (2019) which was about gators. Crawl was a better movie.

Anyway, overall The Bayou was just ok, but below average for a 2025 movie. Athena Strates (Kyle) didn't quiet convince me that she was a gator expert. Elisha Applebaum (Malika) worked her magic and totally convinced me to dislike her character, so well done there, Elisha.

Other actors trying to do their bit were Mohammed Mansaray (Sam) seemed to be confused whether he had to be the comedic relief or a wanna be hero. The crazed pilot, Frank (Andonis Anthony), was not convincing at being a leader. Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong (Dom) was probably the hero, or close to one.

Overall, the effects were not too bad, the story and acting are what you would expect from the B movie. Would I recommend this? A few beers or wine and it is a yes.

Ug, talk about a bad high school project, whole thing was probably filmed from an iphone. The trailer says from the producers of "47 meters down" uh really?

This is like cheap beyond cheap production, which is alright if they tried but the people are annoying, the story makes no sense, and just irritatingly the whole way that gives me a headache.

Everyone in the film is so unlikable and makes no sense, was cheering for the CGI gators. I mean, yeah, these kinds of films should have annoying people, but there's a limit.

And did the meth make the gather super smart too? That Jurassic Park 3 ending is ludicrous.

Easily 1/10.

It's a shame, really, because the acting, cinematography, and score are all fine for a Horror movie. But the script and the directing are terrible. The best actors on the planet couldn't make these character interactions make sense. They wouldn't be able to make the dialog work either.

There's nothing original in the script. It literally sounds like it was cobbled together by AI, from other movies.

I feel bad for the actors... they clearly were invested in doing their best.

Maybe it was made to be a tax write-off. I'm just rambling now because a certain number of characters (letters) is required.

Truth be told, I am a sucker for killer animal movies, and thus I needed no persuasion to sit down and check out the 2025 movie "The Bayou".

Writers Ashley Holberry and Gavin Cosmo Mehrtens put together a script that, while it was generic, was actually entertaining enough. It was a simplistic and straightforward script, and the writers didn't exactly bring anything new to the genre. Regardless, "The Bayou" proved to be an entertaining alligator movie.

I was not familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, but I found the acting performances to be good. I actually do enjoy watching unfamiliar talents on the screen whenever I sit down to watch a movie, so that spoke well in favor of "The Bayou".

The effects in the movie were good, which is a must for a movie with killer animals. There is nothing worse than sitting down and watching a movie where the animals look like they were discarded from a 1990s computer game because they looked to fake. Luckily that was not the case in "The Bayou".

If you enjoy killer animal movies, then directors Taneli Mustonen and Brad Watson does deliver an enjoyable movie with the 2025 movie "The Bayou".

My rating of "The Bayou" lands on a five out of ten stars.