Black Water: Abyss Shows That Even Killer Alligators Can Be… Kind of Meh

By Thom Ernst

Rating: C-

Director Andrew Traucki just can’t be happy leaving people to enjoy their vacation without having them getting mauled and eaten. He’s fed perfectly nice folks to a shark in The Reef and to a mythical jungle cat in The Jungle and he’s at it again with an oversized alligator.

Black Water: Abyss is Traucki’s latest holiday adventure turned ugly, a non-sequel sequel to his film Black Water (2007), a story about an alligator who manages to tree three people in the Australian swamps.
Black Water is an entertaining enough film, although one based on an overused premise that’s been done better. Movies like Rogue — also Australian, also from 2007 — and the John Sayles–scripted Alligator offers more in the way of suspense, carnage, and even satire.

Granted, when it comes to a film that has the most people trapped in trees, Black Water wins. Black Water has its fans and it did well enough to secure Traucki the chance to do more movies starring wild beasts with ferocious appetites. I just didn’t expect a sequel much less a non-sequel sequel.

In Black Water: Abyss, Traucki hooks up with a group of young adults, led by Jessica McNamee — who had previous water-related beast troubles in The Meg (2018) — and Luke Mitchell (Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. ) out for an afternoon adventure. I suspect the characters in the movie must have seen Traucki’s other films and wisely chose to avoid boats, preferring the safer sport of spelunking. But not everyone is keen on cramming themselves into dark narrow spaces.

Not that their concerns matter. It’s a common cheat in movies like this for the voices of reason — which express nothing in any way related to the real danger ahead — to go ignored. That their warnings go unheeded is as much of a bombshell plot device as is the moment when we discover that their cellphones are out of signal range. Screenwriters John Ridley and Sarah Smith attempt to stir up a dramatic discourse between the characters by tossing out reveals like they were throwing chum into a shark tank, but the resulting feeding frenzy is far from satisfying.

The deaths — you did know there would be deaths, didn’t you? — are not fast and furious, but compartmentalized as if the alligator were merely nibbling on selected items off a sample platter. Not since Wally Gator (look it up) has there been an alligator with better table manners.

For the first half of the film, Traucki manages to create a claustrophobic fear that is suitably effective, but ultimately unoriginal. It’s hard not to think of how brazenly Black Water: Abyss borrows from Neil Marshall’s superior spelunking horror, The Descent (2005). But these bits of cinematic plagiarism can be forgiven if there is a worthy payoff. There isn’t. Black Water: Abyss, for all its efforts to rise above its genre, can’t match the tension of the film to which it owes its biggest debt.

Much of the story takes place in a cavernous dome ideal for adventurers who prefer their swimming holes inaccessible. The action is surprisingly stilted even though a cavernous swimming hole offers a far bigger playing field than having all characters confined to a single tree.

Alligator aside, the film has no villain. If the film comfortably adheres to other genre devices (no cell phone signal, prophetic warnings, careless decisions) then it should not skimp on the one device that is the most satisfying — a human villain deserving of his/her gory comeuppance.

Black Water is a minimalistic horror film emphasizing drama over bloodshed. The film delivers on the promise of dropping a group of fresh snacks in an alligator’s lair but limits its violence to shots of churning water turning blood red.

That might sound great to those who like their horror lite (or not at all) but a giant disappointment for those looking forward to some gruesome gator bait.

If you’re concerned about seeing Black Water: Abyss without seeing Black Water, I can confidently say that whatever enjoyment you can get from one film you should hang on to it because the enjoyment is fleeting but it does not hinge on having seen the other.

There are no crossover characters, no continuing plotlines; I doubt even the alligators are the same. Having seen Black Water is only likely to heighten your level of disappointment in Black Water: Abyss. And that won’t be easy.

Black Water: Abyss. Directed by Andrew Traucki. Starring Jessica McNamee, Luke Mitchell, and Amali Golden. Available in select theatres and on demand August 11.