For It Is Man's Number: david reed

Showing posts with label david reed. Show all posts

Tuesday, 13 September 2022

Lake Placid: The Final Chapter (2012)

Spoiler warning, this isn't the last film in the Lake Placid movie series. I am sure that most people wouldn't have been fooled by "The Final Chapter" sub-heading, especially horror fans who saw the same words used so memorably in the Friday The 13th movie series (for a film that currently has about 7 or 8 films after it already). I knew this wouldn't be any kind of proper finale, but I also knew that I would probably wish it WAS a proper finale. This is a series that really hasn't been served well by the people wanting to wring more and more money from sequels that provide nothing but diminishing returns.

The plot isn't even worth the time and space it would take to describe it. Suffice to say, a group of young folk end up beside the wrong lake, which means they could quite quickly become snacks for some hungry crocodiles. Looking out for the kids are Sheriff Giove (Elisabeth Röhm), Reba (Yancy Butler, reprising a character we all thought had died in the previous movie), and Loflin (Paul Nicholls). And Robert Englund plays a hunter/poacher called Jim Bickerman.

Writer David Reed is also returning from the previous movie, where he didn't do too bad a job, although I wish he hadn't. This is a step down, in terms of both the writing and the direction, the latter now in the hands of Don Michael Paul. Neither man does more than a perfunctory job behind the camera, obviously hoping that the wonky CGI and poor pacing will be made easier to accept by the main cast.

It isn't.

Oddly enough, there's at least some potential with the main adults. Röhm has a good presence, and her chemistry with Nicholls works quite well as their characters are pushed closer and closer together by the clumsy script. Butler is happy to once again ham things up a bit, although she has less scenery left to chew on whenever Englund has been onscreen ahead of her. Someone clearly forgot to tell Englund that he didn't have to play his character like a bastard cousin of Ahab. I'm happy about that though, because he certainly adds some fun. Poppy Lee Friar, Benedict Smith, Caroline Ford, Scarlett Hefner, and the rest of the younger cast members are sadly left hanging out to dry, not given any character depth nor any truly memorable moments, which means every scene they are involved in becomes a waiting game until we see some of the older characters back in action.

I know not to expect great things from these movies, I'm not a complete idiot (ahem, no need to look so surprised), but it shouldn't be so hard to make something moderately amusing and entertaining. They almost managed it with the previous film. They don't manage it this time though, and this isn't really worth your time. Unless your a masochistic completist. Like me.

3/10

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Tuesday, 12 April 2022

Lake Placid 3 (2010)

The third film in the series that seemed planned to squander all of the goodwill gained from the first film, Lake Placid 3 isn't terrible, but it's still a very far step down from that first film.

Colin Ferguson and Kirsty Mitchell play Nathan and Susan, a couple who end up taking over the lakeside property left by Sadie Bickerman (there's no substitute this time around, no Betty White or Cloris Leachman amusing viewers as a profane elder). Unbeknownst to Nathan and Susan, their son, Connor (Jordan Grehs) soon starts to amuse himself by feeding baby crocodiles. But baby crocodiles soon grow into big crocodiles. Nathan soon has his hands full, much to his disbelief, helped by Sheriff Tony Willinger (Michael Ironside) and a local hunter named Reba (Yancy Butler). There's also a selection of teens spending time at the lake, bumping up the potential bodycount.

Writer David Reed, who also delivered the next movie in this series, at least does a better job than his immediate predecessors with mixing the humour and the thrills, and director Griff Furst is used to the format for this kind of thing (just browse his filmography to see a variety of great titles that tell you exactly what you can expect from him, including the likes of Arachnoquake and Ghost Shark). He's hampered by the low standard in special effects that most SyFy Channel seem to have, but that doesn't stop him from working well with a script that aims for fun over any attempts at plausibility.

Ferguson and Mitchell are about as bland as you can get, but that's all well and good when you have Ironside being very likeable in his supporting role, as well as Butler being amusingly over the top as someone who enjoys hunting any kind of prey, from the local wildlife to local young men. Grehs just has to be a kid with a secret habit of feeding crocs, which he does well enough, and Kacey Clarke, Mark Evans, Nils Hognestad, Brian Landon, and Angelica Penn play the main teens/appetisers.

Slight spoiler warning here, I guess . . . for anyone who enjoys the turn from Butler in this movie, you may be pleased to see that she is able to return for the next two films in the series, both of which also feature Robert Englund, despite her last scene in this film seeming to have quite an unambiguous fate. Mind you, expecting rigid continuity in a movie series about large killer crocs is probably like expecting to find a side of chips available for a quid in a Michelin-starred restaurant.

If you endured Lake Placid 2 then you might want to at least check this out. It's not one I would recommend to anyone else though. Only the hardiest of creature feature viewers need bother with it (and, indeed, with any other sequel entry in this snap-happy series), and anyone who wants to enjoy an all-too-brief sequence that features crocodiles on the hunt in a grocery store.

4/10