Betty White was brilliant in this film! She was almost clueless to what was going on just as if she were a old senial woman. Her comic character brought a refreshing break to the suspense that was in the film.
My biggest question for this film is; What's the difference between Jurassic Park (action/adventure), Jaws (thriller), and Lake Placid (horror)? For I would have probably categorize them all the same as thriller. They each have the suspense that follows the anxiety of a creature going around following its instincts. In all three there is something that is trying to feed it’s hunger as a predator. In Jurassic Park there is the T-Rex, in Jaws there is the shark, and in Lake Placid it’s the ridiculously large crocodile. Another would be the amount of deaths in the films. In Wolfman, Survival of the Dead, and in Scream the amount of deaths is astronautical while in Lake Placid only two people died. For me, for a film to be horror there needs to be some kind of blood bath. People need to die! :) That's what makes horror so horrifying. For something other than mother nature being able to take one's life so quickly scares people; scares me.
There was a major dose of suspense in this film. I found myself jumping a few times throughout the viewing. The knowing of what is to come and the music behind the feeling brought tension that had me hanging on for every second. Even though I knew the scuba guy in the beginning was about die but there was suspense or tension about when it would happen. That is how it was for the other killings. As the viewer I knew that they were going to die but I didn't know how long I had to wait for it to happen.
I found the script to be a little bland. The dialogue did not captivate me and the story line was kinda boring. Unlike Jurassic Park, Survival of the Dead, and Scream all of the characters could have gotten away if they had just left the area. Though it is seem that they have a moral conscious, the park rangers and police officers, they are characters of a film and the writers made it too easy for them to not get killed. In Jurassic Park the characters were on a distant island constantly surrounded by killer dinosaurs and in Survival of the Dead the characters were once again on some island surround by zombies trying to eat them. Not to say that it only works when the characters are on some island surrounded something that wants to kill them but both of those have the characters in some situation where they literally can not escape from the horror they are going to experience. In Lake Placid, the characters are in the mountains having to deal with 2 just 2 crocodiles.
The croc in this film was ridiculously big and that was awesome! I would totally categorize this under thriller rather than horror.
Danielle,
ReplyDeleteMaybe it would help if you turned to your textbooks to define these terms better. All the films you listed could be considered horror films. In fact, most people consider Jaws a kind of horror film. Jankovich talks about the subgenre of horror films that involve animals/prehistoric creatures, etc. as a type of monster movie that plays on the human vs. nature conflict. Think of the movies in the 1950s with giant ants or Godzilla. These are classic horror films that crossover with sci-fi. Your textbooks really would help here.