Sisters Grace (Diana Glenn) and Lee (Maeve Dermody) decide they've had enough fun hanging out with their mother and decide to grab Grace's boyfriend, Adam (Andy Rodoreda), and spend the rest of their vacation doing something a little more fun. First up on the agenda is a trip to the Crocodile Adventure Park, a farm that breeds crocodiles and shows them off to tourists before eventually using their skin to make garments and bags and other nifty trinkets. Foreshadowing? Yep. Our intrepid trio bunks down at a hotel for the night and then, the next morning, book a trip on a riverboat tour of the swampy area. Adam figures it'll be fun and while the girls are none too impressed with this idea, he talks them into it. They arrive and their tour guide, Jim (Ben Oxenbould), grabs his gun and a bunch of raw meat and off they go. Of course, no sooner have they gotten far enough away from civilization than they're attacked by an angry giant crocodile. Maybe bringing all that meat with them was a bad idea. The crocodile trashes the boat, and our tourists basically spend the rest of the film hiding from the cranky-croc up a tree where he can't get them.

Written and directed by David Nerlich and Andy Traucki, Black Water has its share of problems, the bulk of which stem from the fact that the last half of the movie basically takes place in a tree. Granted, it's a tree near a giant crocodile and one that periodically tries to eat people, but it's still a tree and that doesn't lend itself to much excitement. If watching a pair of Australian gals sit in a tree and scream every few minutes sounds like your idea of a good time, then by all means, give the film a shot but unless you're a fan of the 'screaming Aussie gals in a tree' sub-genre, there are better animal attack films out there.

To the film's credit, when the crocodile does get down to business, things do perk up. There's a refreshing lack of CGI here and a real crocodile has been used more often than not which gives the attack scenes some authenticity that computer generated scenes like those in other recent films can't offer. There just isn't enough crocodile attack action here to make the film that exciting. If we'd been given some character development to make things interesting then this might have been more forgivable than it is but sadly that's not here either.

The film does make good use of its swampy settings. If the characters had been given more to do than sit up a tree and scream then the film could have used this more to its advantage than it does, but regardless, the film at least looks good. Unfortunately a poor set up with too much obvious foreshadowing as to what's to come winds up hurting the picture before it even really gets moving. You also have to wonder why there aren't more crocodiles in the area. One lone beastie is certainly intimidating enough but you'd think that three people might stand a chance of outsmarting it or even harming it enough to make a reasonable escape. The acting is decent, the cinematography genuinely impressive and the attack scenes are strong but the story and circumstances in Black Water just aren't interesting enough to make the film work and as such, parts of it are stronger than the whole. It's worth a look for the few stand out moments that it contains, but it's not likely a picture you'll go back to time and again.

Video:

Black Water looks decent on DVD in an anamorphic 1.85.1 widescreen presentation. The watery swamp where most of the film plays out looks sufficiently murky and dismal and the grey/green color scheme comes across well. There is some mild edge enhancement noticeable on the image from time to time but it isn't overpowering. Skin tones look lifelike and natural and there aren't any problems with mpeg compression artifacts. A few scenes look a little soft but this is a sporadic issue and not a constant one. Overall, the film looks fine.