Welcome to Knockout Horror. Today we are checking out Gator horror movie The Bayou. Now, let’s be honest for a second, we all love horror movies featuring large animals chomping on humans like they are twiglets, right? Be it sharks, crocodiles, large snakes, or big cats. These movies are all a ton of fun.
The only thing you really have to do right when it comes to this concept is make the movie entertaining. Well, as it stands, I have managed to prove with many of my shark movie reviews. That a lot of the people who make these films missed the memo. Some of them are downright terrible and that brings us to today’s movie The Bayou.
It Starts Off Rough
The Bayou follows a group of college students heading out to Florida to scatter the ashes of a deceased friend. Things go wrong pretty fast after they charter a plane which crashes into a swamp inhabited by ultra fast, ultra strong, ultra greedy, and ultra aggressive alligators that have been mutated by.. Ermm.. Meth, I think? I don’t know. They are angry, anyways, and will do anything to get more meth.. Ermm.. Meat.. Meat!
That’s the formula for a fun movie, right? Methed up alligators going nuts, what could go wrong? If a bear on cocaine is a good thing then a bunch of alligators on meth must be better. The truth of the matter is, however, it’s not a good thing. It’s really bad. The whole movie starts off on the wrong foot when you start to hear a bunch of actors attempting American accents… Badly. Things only get worse from there.
This is a movie from my home country of the United Kingdom and you can very much tell, in parts. Everything has a distinctly grey hue to it. The majority of the film consists of a bunch of people moving from one location to another trying to not get eaten. One of the characters is studying animals so knows some stuff about alligators. Giving the group a bit of an advantage. But the alligators are on meth which gives them an even bigger advantage.
It Gets Worse
The Bayou, otherwise known as Gator Creek, is just so damn boring. There are some low stakes situations designed to increase the tension but nothing ever feels all that significant. Interpersonal drama between characters is used to add a little flavour to what is, otherwise, a rather dull cast. But nothing here stands out, at all.
It plods along, occasionally throwing in an alligator attack, or two. But nobody ever really feels all that at risk. There are places to hide out, there are limited situations where the crocodilians actually offer any real threat and one character even manages to kill one of them for funsies using a stick.
It’s hard to shake that feeling that the only time anyone is at any serious risk is when they do something ridiculously stupid. Sure, the head count drops by the end of the movie but we have to jump through some serious logic hoops to get there.
Annoying Characters
The whole thing is made a lot worse by the very annoying cast. Only one of the characters is likable, the others are only really there to either annoy the viewer or be eaten by some alligators who have the meth munchies. The strong accents of nearly the entire cast make a lot of the very poorly written dialogue rather jarring, as well.
Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong, Isabelle Bonfrer and Sarah Priddy were all okay. Athena Strates does better once she settles into things later on. Mohammed Mansaray, apparently, doesn’t get more than a page of lines to speak so is hard to judge. The other characters are all rather annoying. Elisha Applebaum is saddled with the awful, unlikable, Marika and never allowed to be anything other than a complete cow. Andonis Anthony took more chunks out of the scenery than the alligators in a completely over the top performance as pilot Frank.
Direction is subpar. There are a whole bunch of silly, careless, continuity issues and the pacing is very poor. Much of the plot makes no sense and the points used to facilitate the severity of their situation are laughable at best. Seriously, every phone broke? Come on. There is too much preamble and not enough alligator action. I have never seen anything on earth manage to be so chill while off its face on meth as these alligators. I am guessing they have pretty serious cases of ADHD and the drug just calmed them the hell down?
Should You Watch The Bayou?
If you are looking for a bad creature horror, maybe? The Bayou is just so damn boring, though. It suffers from a poor plot, poor pacing, terrible dialogue, bad acting, unlikable characters and, worst of all, it is hugely dull. Not enough alligator action and not enough excitement. Give this one a wide berth the same way you would a methed up croc.
