Black Water: Abyss
SCREEN MEDIAIn 2007, the world saw not one but two Australian low-budget animal attack horror films about man-eating crocodiles: Rogue directed by Greg MacLean and Black Water by Andrew Traucki. Neither of them broke new grounds nor subverted the expectations of the genre convention. However, they were both competent enough to ensure base-level entertainment value rooted heavily in their creators’ understanding of their narrative remit.
What is more interesting, though, is how their creators progressed from there. While Maclean, for whom Rogue was a sophomore feature following a critically-acclaimed outback slasher Wolf Creek, remained faithful to the aesthetic of violent exploitation films but branched out eventually, Andrew Traucki’s career progression became ever more insular: he nested comfortably within the narrow parameters of a creature feature by re-visiting the same recipe multiple times over and substituting the crocodile for a shark (The Reef) or introducing a flimsy supernatural element (The Jungle).
Therefore, it is difficult to expect novelty from Traucki’s latest feature, Black Water: Abyss. Not only does it represent a return to the well by virtue of being yet another low-fi animal attack horror, it is also a sequel to his debut which imparts a whole new layer of quintessential genre convention to adhere to. This time round, instead of being stuck in a tree in a mangrove forest with a crocodile looming in the murky waters beneath them, this film traps its characters in a labyrinthine complex of caves inhabited by a massive hungry crocodile. Moreover, according to the sequel dictum, the beast is deadlier, the stakes are higher, and everything is thus dialled up by a notch or two in comparison to its predecessor. Consequently, the movie does not have an original bone in its body and as such fits snugly within the definition of disposable and predictable genre pulp. In fact, it wears its familiarity on its sleeve. The characters are paper-thin as is the secondary drama underpinning their relationships. The actors inhabiting them are essentially typecast and thus completely forgettable and void of any charisma which would allow the viewer to latch onto them and become somehow partial to the experience.
Yet, despite laughable drama, narrative loose ends and a criminally preposterous ending, Black Water: Abyss is not a complete failure. In fact, it amounts to a rather suspenseful thrill ride and it is all – ironically enough – thanks to Andrew Traucki’s familiarity with the anatomy of this highly specific sub-genre. After all, it is his comfort zone. Therefore, the film finds its footing, almost exclusively in the notion of leveraging the combination of its setting and the central premise as an engine for generation of suspense and jump scares. Similarly to other creature features such as 47 Metres Down and his own debut, Traucki’s Black Water: Abyss relies heavily on using fundamental properties of water as a main tool to get the viewers to sit up in their chairs and experience a discombobulating mixture of anticipation, dread and exhilaration. It may come as a surprise to some, but human vision is severely limited under water (even of the cleanest variety), which is a godsend to a genre filmmaker who can literally place a character inches away from the deadly jaws of a hungry crocodile and it will only emerge from the cloak of invisibility offered by the aquatic medium as it is about to bite into their supple flesh.
This, in a nutshell, describes the kind of entertainment one would be signing up for while watching Black Water: Abyss – it is narratively bland but mechanically competent. As it turns out, it is more than enough to satisfy anyone willing to check their expectations at the door and indulge in the pulpy aesthetic of this film and let themselves be taken on a perfectly forgettable joy ride about crocodiles lurking in the dark and picking off characterless twenty-somethings one by one by jumping at the screen almost exactly when the genre convention expects them to do so. To borrow a line from the great Gene Siskel’s apt summation of Rambo: First Blood Part 2, Black Water: Abyss “is very good at what it does, but what it does isn’t always very good”. In short, although this recommendation comes with its own back-of-the-packet health warning, there is a good chance a willing participant will extract ninety minutes-worth of fun and thrills out this experience, even despite the fact that – as these movies go – it is rather sparse in gore and special effects and rich in familiar predictability.
