Rogue
(2007) dir. Greg Mclean
viewed: 08/09/08
It’s amazing that there are so many movies out there in the world that something as odd and specific as a horror film genre of giant creatures of the order crocodilia could exist, but I am proposing that it does. Most recently, there was the film Primeval (2007), about a real life killer crocodile in Africa. There is the earliest one in the genre that I can think of, Alligator (1980), which had the critter in the sewers of Chicago rather than its native habitat.
Well, the latest in the genre is the less campy and far more earnest film, Rogue, from Australian writer/director Greg Mclean, whose previous film, Wolf Creek (2005) also was a cautionary tale of the beautiful Outback of Australia for tourists and pleasure-seekers. In Wolf Creek, it was a madman serial killer (also allegedly based on a true story). In Rogue, it is a massive male rogue crocodile, enormous and angry, who doesn’t like his very isolated territory invaded.
The film does truly have an earnestness. A lot of Australian films seem to take great pride in the weirdness of the Aussies of the bush, whack-jobs, yet colorful. Mclean does use quite recognizeable character types in his film: the gorgeous, tomboy tour boat operator, the English family with a crippled, ailing mother, a colorful Irish hippie frump, the bad boys of the swamps… But the characters are less “stock” than is often the case. It feels like they were chosen more for a purpose than simply to get eaten up.
Mclean shows great love for the Northern Australia visually depicted in the film. It’s stunning, and according to comments that they made, some landscape that has literally never been captured in cinema before. It’s isolated and ancient, like the rogue crocodiles, the living dinosaurs who have not needed to evolve for a long, long time. There is a small hat tip to the Aboriginal mysticism, noting that part of the river is sacred, marked with native art. There is an attempt to show the beauty and the age of the largely unbefouled Outback.
And Mclean shows lots of shots of actual crocodiles as well, peppering the narrative with facts and factoids, showing that this story really isn’t meant to be as far-fetched as one might think. Mclean even relates back to a specific crocodile that in real life attacked many a boat to protect its territory, and he notes that there are crocodiles that have been reported that are even bigger than the digitally animated Rogue of our story.
It’s earnestness is admirable. But I think I was expecting more outlandishness. The camp value is smaller, but the film is still a fairly intense thriller, one that will certainly have me thinking more than twice before taking a river boat ride up the crocodile-infested waters of Northern Australia.
