Black Water: Abyss

If your bored and have nothing else to watch then by all means go and watch this film, you could do worse but if you have other things to watch and miss this little title then don't panic your not missing much. I was hoping this would be much more edge of your seat tension but there was none. That's right no tension at all, in fact the last thirty minute I was praying the film to end. Now don't get me wrong, the cast and the story did nothing wrong but the film itself became boring quickly, nothing happened and that my dear reader is where the film falters. A basic adventure film, not a horror. Just about four stars.

Makes you want to root for the monster. Really quite a stupid movie with a soundtrack that sounded more like Love Story than a monster flick.

Andrew Traucki, director of the somewhat acclaimed creatures features "Black Water" and "The Reef", brings a sequel (only in name) to his first killer croc hooray. I remember watching "Black Water" way back when, and it worked on suspense, the limited location, the one woman's show, though still lacking some necessary sauce. This next part seems to be also relying a lot on suspense and fear of a force that's lurking unseen - the movie largely does so with lackluster energy, and a newcomer filler is a fair amount of melodrama, which didn't feel very welcome to me.

Like many similar movies, "Abyss" kicks off with a pair of unfortunate tourists falling prey to the croc of the caves, it will be in his home we're going to spend most of the screentime. A home too plain, too evenly lit, barely succeeding to feel claustrophobic, consequently struggling to establish an atmosphere. Our protagonists are 5 rather stereotypical movie friends with typical plot problems and arches - one has to be prepared for soapy notes throughout. Story's simple and slow, ending does not hit any nails on the head, and all in all there's a predictable story riddled with minor bugs. While all this may be so, a good portion of people are probably most excited about the action and croc himself. Well, he hides. A lot. There's some cgi and some practical effects, and I'm not entirely sure about the partial usage of real crocodiles as it's known about the first "Black Water" flick. "Abyss" is a low budget feature, and action describes that, not the worst, but mostly heavily edited with close-ups, shaky cam, all kinds of cheaper substitute techniques. It's a killer reptile movie that's above the syfy-type, but below the better examples like "Rogue" or "Crawl", though I'll admit the latter is not a lot about that realism. The cast consists of little known names who do a decent job, but little of anything manages to impress as the growingly tedious nature of "Black Water: Abyss" marches on for 90 minutes.

I felt a certain disappointment for an anticipated movie coming from a guy who's biggest love and mission seems to be animal/nature/creature horror genre. If you have a lot of patience and are looking for utter realism in this genre movies, it might be worth giving "Abyss" a spin. My rating: 4/10.

Well, did we really need another movie about a group of spelunking people getting trapped underground with no way out, a rising water mass and a man-eating creature?

The answer is no, not really. And the 2020 movie "Black Water: Abyss" from writers John Ridley and Sarah Smith didn't really impress much. Especially since it offered virtually nothing new to the genre, and there are other movies in the genre that proved to have more bite to it - pardon the pun.

And director Andrew Traucki didn't really manage to muster up a story that was all that entertaining. Sure, "Black Water: Abyss" was watchable, but it was awfully predictable and generic. And that made the movie suffer.

The acting in the movie was adequate, but the characters were slightly less adequate. But once you've seen one of these movies, you've essentially seen them all. And the characters in "Black Water: Abyss" were generic, sure.

And for a movie with a man-eating crocodile, then "Black Water: Abyss" just didn't pack enough of a forceful bite. The scenes with the crocodile were just too far between, and there wasn't enough scenes with the man-eater. So it was slightly boring.

I will say, though, that the crocodile was nicely animated and seemed very realistic. So that was definitely a plus. Just a shame it wasn't all that much in the movie.

The ending of the movie was just bland and super predictable. It was actually a ridiculous ending to the movie; one that you saw coming a mile away.

I am rating "Black Water: Abyss" a less than mediocre four out of ten stars. It offers nothing that we haven't already seen in other movies in the same genre.

5 go into a cave. They get trapped inside because of a storm ( that they knew about ). A big croc is lurking and you can guess the rest yourself. Could've been a lot better but also worse. Was just glad to be back in the cinema