Lake Placid: The Final Chapter





release year: 2012
genre: monster horror
viewing setting: home streaming 4/20/23

synopsis: Officials, poachers, and college students all get a good look at the oversized fauna of the lake.

impressions: Sometime after the last movie, someone got smart and built an electric fence all around the region inhabited by the gigantic crocodiles. Unfortunately, various things happen to circumvent that protection. A sampling of what this movie has in store for you: a croc chasing a truck...CGI of varying quality...the first-ever attempt to address the reason for the presence of oversized crocs in the area...a random turkey...the drama of the young college students and their various romances...poachers with terrible aim...a kid who's even dumber than he looks...a dumbass bus driver...the kids letting the dumbass bus driver hang out with them...plenty of nudity...death by a swarm of baby crocs...someone who should have been dead returns...croc-vision...a croc getting stuck...a croc leaping into the air...two different instances of people rummaging around inside a dead croc's mouth...inconsistent size of particular crocs. I guess I had two complaints with this. First, some croc victims died immediately, while others were apparently only wounded and lived. Second, there was the "croc out of sight, out of mind" effect wherein one of the things was attacking or close...and then the very next scene it was just gone. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty damn sure that when a giant crocodile is after you, it won't just wander away without any explanation whatsoever.

reviewer quotes:
   me: "Oh, is that the same crocodile?"
   wife: "I don't know, they're all over. This place is infested."

body count: 1 turkey, 12 humans (one of whom managed to electrocute himself.) There may have been more, given the random body parts sometimes strewn about, but I only tallied confirmed kills.

acting: Yancy Butler is back, and continues to channel angry Linda Hamilton from Terminator: Dark Fate but I will admit, she has some good lines. Elisabeth Rohm is the sometimes-timid sheriff, and Poppy Lee Friar is her dorky daughter. Paul Nicholls is another cop, and Benedict Smith is his dorky son. Robert Englund shows up as a crusty old poacher.

final word: Watchable, with minor flaws.

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