Gator Creek never quite matches the rush of its opening moments, when a DEA raid reveals that the source of these particular gators’ aggression and strength is that they’re on meth.
★★☆☆☆
Unfortunately, the rest of the film can’t live up to this promise. There’s little life or energy in Gator Creek, which misses its chance to be a so-bad-it’s-good schlocky swamp-based version of Cocaine Bear (2023).
Biology student Kyle (Athena Strates) is on a road trip to Florida to scatter her brother’s ashes, along with friends Alice (Madalena Aragão) and Sam (Mohammed Mansaray) and frenemy Malika (Elisha Applebaum). Malika quickly upends plans by revealing that she’s booked them all places on a tiny charter plane—despite Kyle’s fear of flying. Piloted by the grizzled (and drunk) Frank (Andonis Anthony) and packed full of a supporting Gator-chow cast, the plane soon crashes in the bayou, leaving our heroes to survive a swamp packed with drug-fuelled gators.
Ostensibly set in the American South (actually London and The Philippines) with a very clearly not-American cast, Gator Creek was always going to feel a little rough around the edges. Unfortunately, the film decides to play it entirely straight. On the scale of killer reptile movies, Gator Creek is attempting to be more Crawl (2019) than Lake Placid (1999). The dour tone only serves to highlight the flaws in the film’s plot and performances and its cheap gator effects. The mix of CGI, puppets and reaction shots nearly works, but the cuts to stock footage of real alligators are laughably bad. They certainly would have gone down better if they weren’t the only thing to laugh at.
The script, written by first-time writers Ashley Holberry and Gavin Cosmo Mehrtens is packed full of cliches: creepy old men give ominous warnings, people wander off by themselves as if forgetting that they’re running for their lives from gators, the annoying guy with the cell phone is clearly going to be one of the first ones to get chomped.
Strates is compelling as hero Kyle, who quickly rises to the occasion and becomes the survivors’ defector leader—although the film never quite makes it clear where she got her survival smarts from. The backstory we are given is both cliché and a little bizarre. Kyle hasn’t just lost a brother, she’s lost a brother in a convenience store robbery scenario where he rushed a gunman, and Kyle didn’t react fast enough to save him. This tragic backstory serves as the basis for the closest thing the film has to a message: it’s better to fight and risk death than sit and wait to die. A bombastic proclamation to set our remaining heroes up for a Gator-based show-down.
The supporting actors playing the rest of Kyle’s friends do their best with what little they have. The bitchy Malika never misses the opportunity for a catty quip or to put herself first—it’s a shame the film can’t quite commit to her character as a full villain whose selfishness gives her a knack for surviving.
Frank has a similar problem. It’s unclear for large chunks of the movie if his attempts to insert himself into college-girl drama are intentionally creepy or supposed to be funny. Out of the additional survivors, Isabelle Bonfrer and Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong’s performances stand out in that they really sell that they were just a nice couple out for a day trip and now one of them definitely has blood poisoning.
There is some fun to be had in Gator Creek as the toothy monsters chomp their way through the cast. But ultimately it’s a film too bogged down in cliches and uninspired dialogue to shine. Unlike its meth-fuelled reptiles, there’s not much energy here.
The Verdict
Gator Creek has the potential to be a gory good time, but the film is too low-energy with neither the budget nor the ability to make itself a great horror. The result is an underwhelming film that’s not in on the joke.
Words by Louise Weaver
Gator Creek is available on digital platforms from the 24th of March.
Support the Indiependent
We’re trying to raise £200 a month to help cover our operational costs. This includes our ‘Writer of the Month’ awards, where we recognise the amazing work produced by our contributor team. If you’ve enjoyed reading our site, we’d really appreciate it if you could donate to The Indiependent. Whether you can give £1 or £10, you’d be making a huge difference to our small team.