observation notes: Supercroc

"For all of our advanced technology, we have not created anything that comes close to the aggression, resiliency, and overall fighting power of the ancient crocodile."

Truer words were never spoken: this beast clocks in at 50 feet long, 25 feet tall, hungry, ornery, and complete with a rock solid exterior no bullet can pierce. It's Supercroc, The Asylum's capitalization on the croc-craze of '07 instigated by films like Rogue, Primeval and Black Water, and, like those films, it's about a really, really big crocodile. Really big. Revisit the specs above if needed.

The films opens with a platoon of soldiers scouting a wooded area. This didn't make a lot of sense to me until the arrival in the ninth minute of the biggest GD CG croc I've ever seen. It promptly eats the most obvious target - the soldier in glasses - and then most of the others, leaving only one, female survivor, a chick I thought was Erica Pod People Roby until just this moment, when I linked to the IMDB page (Asylum doesn't mention this one on their website. I'm sure it's a legal thing and not, you know, a shame thing.).

The slaughter of soldiers definitely raises the ire of the military. In their investigation they determine a quake a few days earlier in the Pacific must have released this thing of prehistoric parameters from some sort of stasis. So it's really old, really evolved, and really fucking hungry. These are the things that make it Super. By the way, it's the croc that's super, not the CGI of said croc, that's actually kinda not so good, pretty fake, in a Walking with Dinosaurs kind of way. That aside, though, it's a really big fucking crocodile, I can't emphasize that enough: it's city-bus big, twin-engine-plane big. And because of this bigness, plus the attack on U.S. troops (you know we don't play that), the military goes all out in its attempts to slay the Supercroc, a mission that takes on a new urgency upon the discovery of dozens of supercroc supereggs. Dozens. It's a full-on supercroc invasion we're facing here, people!

"Son, I've got a 10,000-pound reptile barring down on a populated area; the last thing I need is comic relief. Understood?"

Yessir. Sorry.

So the croc stalks, and the military tries everything they can think of to stop it, to no avail, and as a result, pretty much everything the supercroc comes across, it eats. We get the genesis of the Mega Shark/airplane scene here when the supercroc lurches from the depths to take down a helicopter. It's a prolonged scene, too, not like the blink-and-you-miss-it Mega Shark takedown.

As for the rest of the film, it's all about figuring out how to kill the oldest, most evolved creature in existence; the word "impenetrable" is used a good half-dozen times, most in the same monologue.

So, as the film really revolves around the girl I thought was Erica Roby, and since I thought she was Erica Roby, most of the notes I took focus on what a startling improvement she made from Pod People. Those are out now. I'll just say the girl that is actually in the film carries it very well, and balances her emotions deftly between bereaved and enraged. Kim Little is the other standout, an Asylum vet (she's got good connections) who brings intensity and credence to her performance as the lady in the know about ancient crocodiles. She's kind of a mix between Sweet Dee from Always Sunny, Angela from The Office and the porcelain-skinned beauty Laura Harris (who by the way needs to be in an Asylum flick, stat.) The other actor who caught my eye was David Novak, but only because he looks like a skinny Robert Forster.

All in all not bad; if you like giant-crocodile movies you'll probably like this one. I could have used more and varied destruction - the film takes place in two locations: the woods and the control room - I mean, you've got a supercroc, you might as well use him. Have the motherfucker taking down skyscrapers, Croc Kong and shit like that. Kudos on the chopper scene, though. That, plus the talented collection of actors, pull this one off.