Croc! aka 'Crocodile Vengeance' (2022) - One of the biggest carcrashes I couldn't look away from

Okay, if you've watched one or more horror/slasher movies, you'll probably have found yourself shouting at the on-screen characters while rolling your eyes at the choices they make in their futile attempts to survive.  In 1997 'Scream' even made the cliche mainstream, commenting on how the 'dumb blonde' always runs back into the house instead of to safety.

So, here we are 25 years later and horror movie characters are still making dumb decisions.  I'm sure we can excuse one or even two, but, you probably haven't seen 'Croc!'

The film opened in typical fashion.  A young couple were camping in the wilderness.  They get eaten by a giant, hungry computer-generated crocodile with a very wiggly tongue.  The next scene we see I instantly spot as the UK.  Forgive my cultural stereotypes, but I was always under the impression that crocodiles normally hung out in Australia.  Apparently not.  This one lives in the ground of a big, old-fashioned countryside hotel - a hotel that's about to have a posh wedding take place.

So the guests arrive and none of their mobile phones work.  Is there really anywhere in the UK wish such poor signal?  And no one seems to work in the hotel as all we see are the guests.  One of them has a car (how did the rest get there?), but, just when she needs it, it doesn't start (even though it looks quite new and it's summer when your car battery doesn't often become flat).  The groom even sees the killer croc eat one of the bridesmaids the night before the ceremony, but lucky he's an idiot and decides not to tell anyone - an action which leads to the reptile gatecrashing his big day and snacking on various family members.

So, picture the scene.  The setting is a big house in the country.  The enemy is one single crocodile.  Naturally, most of the humans lock themselves in the house and keep track of their hungry foe out the windows.  Now, call me odd, but if the croc is out the front, I'd probably go out of one of the many back doors or windows and just keep running.  The chases of a dumb animal figuring out or hearing me leave is minimal.  Or everyone could just run out in different directions - it couldn't get them all.

Instead, they have a much better plan... they invent excuses to go outside one by one and generally make a lot of noise to annoy their adversary.  Then they run away.  Only they kind of run about ten paces then turn round to check on their pursuer, but, in doing so, fall over.  And that 's the last we see of them.

In short, I never seen such a dumb film with illogical decisions and daft characters.  I haven't even touched on the awful acting (mainly from the dad) and the diabolical script (weirdly, although it was easy to tell the croc was computer generated, it wasn't as bad as I thought it could have been.  No, the truly bad special effects were saved for the gun shots - yes, a character actually has a gun - he just forgets about it until half way through the film).  But, at the end of the day, I never turned it off and no one was holding a gun to my head to make me watch it.  I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and had to stick it through to the end just to see how bad it gets.  And it gets very bad.  But, in this upside down world we live in, 'Croc!' therefore firmly cements its place in the 'so-bad-it's-good' category.

I'll probably watch it again one day, just to check it all wasn't just a badly-written fever dream.  

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights