Rating: D+
Dir: Binlin Jin
Star: Camille Chalons, Ai Dong, Liu Yu In, Zuo Jinzhu
I should have realized we were in trouble when it barely adhered to the six-minute rule of Chinese animal attack movies. Six minutes in, and the amount of giant crocodile present was very much at the token level. Oh, there had been some action, certainly. What it involved, who was doing what, and why, were harder to ascertain. Any oversized reptile, however, was notable by its absence. Sadly, this proved an accurate representation of the rest of the movie until the end. This unironically used the most clichéd of clichéd shots in the genre, after the monster had been vanquished: a shot of an unhatched egg. We are not waiting for the sequel with anticipation.
It’s one where cast information is vague and uncertain. I have some actors’ names, but nothing about which characters they play. There’s no IMDb page, and the credits were in Chinese. Even during the film, the subtitles were small and, like myself, keen to get out of there as quickly as possible. Combine that with the film’s general inability to retain my attention and… This will not be one of my finest reviews. It takes place, I can state with some degree of confidence, on an island, where there is a crocodile. The daughter of a rich industrialist (Zuo Jinzhu – I saw a picture of him so recognized his character!) has gone missing on the island, and he recruits a team to find her.
That’s all you need to know. There is other stuff, but it’s entirely rote, such as the creature not being a natural specimen. I think I kinda figured that out when it turned invisible. Something about it having its DNA mixed with that of a chameleon, though any detailed explanation was succinct to the point of terseness. This was, actually, a kinda cool idea – likely the only one this has to offer, and sadly, never used to its potential. There was also a second creature, worse than the first, and heroic sacrifice from the member of the group who turned out to be behind everything. In a mild surprise, that wasn’t who I was expecting.
You can probably tell, I am reaching hard for positives here. There are so many tropes (it feels like half the group are seeking a lost relative), I would suggest that the script for this was created by feeding our YouTube playlist of WCAA films into DeepSeek. But I think an AI would probably come up with something more entertaining, because despite running barely seventy minutes, this is largely tedious. Far too much tramping round the jungle, for one thing, the action is mediocre, and despite the title, the crocodile would barely rate an honourable mention in a Reptiles of Unusual Size competition. If you watch this, you’ll forget all about it very quickly. On the whole though, I’d suggest bypassing the watching and going straight to forgetting it.