Black Water: Abyss Review

August 17, 2020 at 11:13pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a focused, and intimate survival tale. It follows a group of friends that are for whatever reason exploring a remote cave system. This takes place in Northern Australia, and completely embraces that element of location. There’s not necessarily a whole lot to it, but they play around with the typical survival aspects you might expect while also having a tad bit of tension to go alongside it. I don’t know if this necessarily did anything wildly new, but it was entertaining enough for what it was trying to provide.

It had visceral moments, and certainly didn’t hold back on those points of shock. It can be rather violent, and that was fun to see. Now, this did feel somewhat repetitive in nature. They don’t necessarily do anything too fresh, and keep you stuck in the same spot almost the entire time. I would have liked more creativity in their escape efforts, which didn’t seem that varied. It was largely just people slowly moving within a singular cave area for almost the entirety of the film.

They did slightly play around with what as time went on, and I did enjoy the building tension. Still, some of the side stories were too cliché, and yet at the same time handled in an almost unrealistic way I suppose. It also borders on some slightly ridiculous elements towards the end that make it feel silly. That’s where the coherence is a bit all over the place. It starts out sort of silly, becomes more serious and ends in a rather ridiculous way.

The situation these individuals find themselves stuck in is just rather odd. I’ve seen how they got there, and at the same time don’t understand why they were seeking this out. There were light bits of drama sprinkled between the group and some surprises for the individuals as well.

It’s fairly predictable, and a run of the mill light horror experience with a crock just motoring around occasionally. I did like the gore aspect, that was well handled. I was just expecting something more intense. I’d say the characters are fairly forgettable, with some rather drab acting at times. I didn’t feel that any really stood out to me, but they did to the crocodile that started munching on them.

The Conclusion

Black Water: Abyss is ok, it’s about a crocodile eating folks that largely stand around and then it ends with some really silly moments. Tonally it’s all over the place, and that sort of detracted from my ending feelings towards this one.

I think the idea has potential, but this doesn’t take it anywhere new with some execution that just feels off. I didn’t necessarily dislike this, it’s an alright watch. I think the tension was handled well, it just need more to build off of.

It was way too focused on one area, while not having enough going on in that area to make it thrilling for those that want to feel a sense of grim fear. It’s very small in scale, and it doesn’t do enough to make you actually care about any of the characters involved. You may very well end up cheering for that crocodile in this one. The gore was well done, that looked cool.

Black Water: Abyss Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening Provided by Route 504

Rating Overall: 5.4