Written and directed by Paul Dale, Sewer Gators is a horror comedy film about a small town that is plagued by alligators that come out of the sewers to attack people while they are in their home.
When several locals are killed several days before the annual Gator Festival, Sheriff Mitchell (Kenny Bellau) enlists alligator expert Laura Andrews (Manon Pages) to help him put an end to the killer alligators but Mayor Bobby (Sean Phelan) refuses to cancel the upcoming Gator Festival, despite the number of locals that are being killed by them.
I’d like to think that I have an eclectic taste in film and I enjoy supporting independent cinema the best I can. I also appreciate the amount of effort that goes into making a film. But this film is just a disaster from start to finish. I acknowledge that there are plenty of bad films that can be fun to watch or fall under the ‘so bad it is good’ category, but sadly this isn’t one of those films. I am not sure if it was intentional or not, but the film’s picture looks cheap and unremarkable, which isn’t good at all. The film’s humour is juvenile and feels like it was written by a teenager. In fact, it is hard to know if the jokes in the film are intentional or accidental, which I found extremely frustrating.
The special effects do this film no favours, as they look mediocre, unrealistic and the use of miniature toy gators might have been acceptable if they were used in a better way, but sadly they weren’t. The story bares a strong resemblance to Jaws except set in a small town and features gators instead of a shark. As you could probably imagine, the film doesn’t have any any stand-out acting performances, but I will acknowledge Manon Pages as Laura Andrews as she appears to be the only person who is trying to put in a good performance, and she is actually believable a crocodile expert.
The film is only an hour long which is quite short for a feature film. Despite having a short duration. Sewer Gators still feels like it drags on and when you think the film is finally over, the end credits scroll at a snail’s pace and even though they include a few bloopers, it still feels like an eternity. Most of the credits are a joke that are more frustrating than funny and to make it worse, there is no music but rather a parody of a talkback radio or podcast host rambling on which makes the whole experience worse than it already is.
Sewer Gators is another addition to a series of films that comes across that being bad on purpose, which may come off as clever because they are in on the joke. But the film just comes across as unfunny and unnecessary.
Sewer Gators will be available on VOD, DVD, Blu-Ray and collectable VHS from the By The Horns website from the 3rd of June 2022.
For more information, visit: https://www.bythehorns.store