Rating: C
Dir: Michael Houston King
Star: Derek Russo, Jeff Benninghofen, Sarah Voigt, Michael Houston King
a.k.a. Lake Jesup: Bonecrusher’s Revenge
I think how much you get out of this perhaps depends on what you are expecting. Based on the original title and the opening few minutes (not least the incredibly stereotypical redneck clichés on view), I was prepared for a creature feature, roughly on the level of a SyFy Original Movie. When your “with…” credit goes to Danny Nucci – were Casper Van Dien and Eric Roberts unavailable? – we seemed to be deep in the bargain basement bin. Yet it’s not as anticipated. Not necessarily better. However, it deserves a little credit for trying something different. As long as you want a family drama about a convicted felon seeking to restore his civil rights, with an alligator adjacent.
Lake Jesup (and I can’t be the only one who keeps feeling that’s misspelled) is a real spot in Florida, covering 65,000 acres, but with a maximum depth of just ten feet. It is, per Wikipedia, “considered to support one of the state’s densest populations of alligators.” Here, there’s one in particular, the Bonecrusher of the previous (better?) title, who escapes from a park run by shameless huckster Angus Sullivan (Benninghofen). He makes no bones about having encouraged aggressive behaviour in his animals, to increase their commercial appeal. That this has led to Bonecrusher eating people, he merely considers free advertising. Local mayor Sam Neuhauser (King) is less impressed and contracts with veteran hunter Bubba Coggins (Russo) to take care of the man-eating creature.
The particular lure is, Bubba has a felony conviction hanging over him, in which Sullivan was involved, preventing Coggins from having a relationship with his daughter. The mayor promises the hunter that can be expunged in exchange for dispatching Bonecrusher. Naturally, it’s not that simple. Bubba’s fraught past with Sullivan gets in the way of simple ‘gator hunting, as does old flame Lainy (Voigt). Indeed, the further you get into this, the less the film seems to care about the monstrous reptile, being more interested in Bubba’s family drama. This works better than I’d expect, helped by a decent performance from Russo, who looks like a musclebound meat-head, yet turns out to have more depth than you initially would imagine. It’s surprising nuance in a film with this title.
Yet it’s also the problem. I didn’t really want nuance. I wanted a swamp-sized blender of human body parts, not a character piece, which occasionally teeters on the edge of becoming soap opera. Sure, a number of people do get eaten (to the point you wonder why Sullivan’s facility is allowed to continue operating). It just never feels as if the makers were very interested in this, the perfunctory nature of the attacks suggesting almost embarrassment at having to include them. It’s rare for a film to be too sympathetic to its characters. It might be the case here though, spending an excess of time on Bubba’s dry-land issues, and not enough on the one lurking just beneath the surface of Lake Jesup.