Rogue (2007) – Review

With the merciless Wolf Creek, antipodean director Greg McLean gave us a chilling vision of exactly how dangerous the outback can be courtesy of Mick Taylor, a seemingly jocular Crocodile Dundee type who turns out to have the same extracurricular tastes as the Texas Chain Saw Massacre family – however, it probably became obvious to the filmmaker that showing Aussie under that sort of light was probably not great news to the Australian tourist board and McLean subsequently went on to address these unfair depictions. After all, why should one single maniac living in the Outback be so threatening when Australia’s entire ecosystem seemingly has similarly genocidal leanings.
And with that, the director released the little-seen and criminally underrated Rogue; a movie about one of the more conventional predators that stalk the land of Fosters and wallabies: the salt water crocodile.
Needless to say, the effects to hapless tourists pretty much remain the same…

Flustered American travel journalist, Pete McKell is currently embarking on a crocodile watching boat trip in Kakadu National Park that sits within Australian Northern territory and while the unbearable heat and copious flies are quite irritating, his fellow tourist also prove to be a fairy annoying bunch. Still, the view is absolutely stunning and matters are soothed by the fact that the plucky person leading the tour, wildlife researcher Kate Ryan, seems to be fully on the top of her game.
After a weird run in with a couple of bullying local (one of whom, Neil, seems to have a history with Kate), the tour goes well until they all spot a flare fizzing through the sky and after some debate they change course up the river to see if they can be some sort of assistance. However, once they reach their new destination, matters soon death roll out of control when the cause of this apparent ruckus is a huge, 20 foot, saltwater crocodile that immediately incapacitates their boat, causing it to run aground on a little dirt island in the centre of a lake. Matters soon go from awful to even more awful when they find out that a) this gargantuan amphibian is deeply territorial and b) the meagre island they’ve taken refuge on is rapidly disappearing as the tide rises.
After the first victim is taken with barely a ripple left in the water, the survivors realise that the croc has no intention of leaving them alone while they are trespassing in its crocodile bachelor pad and so desperate plans are enacted to try and get them on the “safer” side of the river. But outwitting a reptile the size of a house boat proves to be tougher than you’d think and after their desperate plans start to fail, the next destination these tourists are in danger of visiting is going to be the crocodile’s bowels.

Due to it’s more classic, familiar nature, Rogue never seemed to get the same kind of plaudits that the more vicious and unpredictable Wolf Creek recieved; which is somehow both utterly unfair and totally expected at the same time. On one hand, I totally get it because Wolf Creek was an uncompromising and unforgettable trawl through unbearable tension and brutal violence which felt vitally fresh and gave us the chilling term “head on a stick”. In comparison, following it that up with a simple killer crocodile movie initially seemed like something of a step back as every fucker and their dog seemed to splurge out movies about murderous wildlife at a furious rate. On top of that McLean opts to go the more taunt, thriller route rather than shooting for the utter ludicrous nature of Deep Blue Sea or the wry wit of Lake Placid and those hoping for a more showy enterprise may initially feel let down. However, once the carnage begins, McLean takes something of a rare approach for these kinds of movies and opts to portray the voracious villain as a real animal rather than some hyper intelligent monster that seems to be playing chess while its prey stumbles around playing checkers. The result is less straight horror and more of a survival flick as our human characters try to use their brains to avoid having their mangled bodies stuffed in a crocodile’s larder and this are made all the more gripping by the fact that the movie relies on drawn out scenes rather than an endless stream of thing-bursting-out-of-the-water jump scares.
The best example of this is the terrifyingly underplayed nature of the first attack that is so subtle, you might find yourself reaching for you remote control to work out what the Hell just happened. One minute the character is shin deep in water while everyone’s attention is diverted elsewhere, the next we cut back to the sound of a soft splash to reveal nothing but the sight of a giant tail disappearing beneath the surface and a woman who has immediately just become a widow.

From here things continue to be oh-so-slightly off kilter as McLean fucks with the rules just enough that the remainder of Rogue remains nicely unpredictable while still feeling nicely familiar as even the rare famous faces in the cast prove to be enjoyably vunerable to giant, snapping jaws. However, while there’s the odd vicious kill and the occasional mangled body, Rogue goes admirably light on the rouge, avoiding a frenzied bloodbath in favour of Spielbergian tension and Hitchcockian dread that lasts all the way to a rousing game of croc and mouse in the creature’s lair.
The cast are well suited, if a bit typically bland, with Radha Mitchell putting those old  Pitch Black instincts to good use as yet another commanding lead. Also lacing the cast is a pre-Avatar Sam Worthington, an unfeasibly young, pre-Alice In Wonderland Mia Wasikowska and Mick Taylor himself, John Jarrett, who plays a much more sedate role this time round as he emotes from underneath a Nigel Mansell moustache as a sensitive widower. However, while the cast look suitably terrified while a scaly juggernaut fucks up all of their survival plans, Rogue biggest Achilles heel is that they’re mostly a jumble of stock characters that include various panicking Karens and jumpy examples of comic relief and thus aren’t particularly interesting beyond either screaming or dying.

However, Rogue manages to emerge from the depths of the nearest creek to profoundly stand alongside other, over-achieving croc/gator movies simply by keeping things deceptively simple and keeping the man vs nature themes in the foreground
Maybe a bit too restrained for those hoping for a flesh-tearing tooth-fest – but this croc manages to compensate by taking it’s very simple concept and sticking to it with an eye on suspense and some surprisingly great CGI.
Maybe they worked for scale….

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