Verdict
Summary
The movie did exactly what it set out to do, and while it’s dumb and nothing new, it’s fun for what it was.
Plot:
A plane crashes on an island where some creatures have mutated into massive size.
Review:
A Chinese airliner crashes right next to an island in the middle of the ocean, but only a handful of survivors make it to the island alive. The survivors include a tough ex-soldier and his daughter, a young married couple expecting their first baby, a guy who was traveling to get a heart transplant, a social media influencer, and a few others. As soon as they all take a breath, they all realize that the island is host to a massive, dinosaur-sized crocodile, and some gargantuan spiders lurking in the jungle. They also find a little hut that another plane crash survivor from WWII built, and they find his supplies, including a map of the island, an old, rusty machine gun, and some grenades. But the big secret of the island is that the original plane crash survivor was transporting some nuclear chemicals that may have helped mutate some of the creatures on the island. If the Chinese survivors are going to make it off the island, they’ll have to battle the huge croc and the spiders and even each other if they’ll have a future.
A pretty slick little creature feature with some impressive CGI designs, the Chinese-produced Crocodile Island is exactly the sort of thing that the SyFy Channel made over the course of 20 years, and in that regard it’s a success and does its job perfectly with nicely timed appearances of the monsters throughout its short running time. The characters are completely boring stock cardboard characters, which is to be expected, and some of the choices the filmmakers made give away its very low budget. For example: the spider webs in the movie are terrible and cheap, but I didn’t really care. The movie did exactly what it set out to do, and while it’s dumb and nothing new, it’s fun for what it was. Directed by Xu Shixing and Simon Zhao.
Well Go USA just released a DVD (no Blu-ray) of Crocodile Island, and it only comes in Chinese with English subtitles, no English dub, which was a little weird. China has made a ton of these creature features in the same vein, so here’s hoping Well Go releases more of these.
