‘ I’m rooting for the crocodile. I hope he swallows your friends whole…’
Just as Jaws is the final word on shark movies, Alligator will never be surpassed in the… well… alligator subgenre either. Where that film manages to be frightening, compelling and funny, often within the same scene, Lake Placid aims for horror-comedy and ends up achieving neither…
When Sheriff Hank Keough (Brendan Gleeson) watches his friend Walt (David Lewis) be ripped apart by some unknown creature in Black Lake, Maine, he alerts the local sheriff (Bill Pullman) and city girl and palaeontologist, Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda), to investigate. He does not invite crocodile enthusiast Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt) to get involved but, sure enough, he gets involved anyway.
At 82 minutes, Lake Placid never outstays its welcome, and the wonderful practical effects coupled with the talented cast save the film somewhat, but this is the kind of B-movie schlock you watch once and never think about again. Mercifully, the alligator, created by legendary special effects artist Stan Winston (Jurassic Park, The Terminator) does look spectacular, and genuinely frightening, but that doesn’t excuse the inane, smug dialogue or predictable plotting. It’s hard to stay mad at a film that sees two such likeable actors as Gleeson and Pullman hanging out on a lake together, however, and Fonda is always a captivating screen presence (who audiences didn’t see enough of as she retired from acting completely at the age of 38).
Lake Placid is a mildly entertaining creature feature that deserves to be filed alongside Deep Blue Sea, Deep Rising, and other films without ‘deep’ in the title. It’s fine.
