Bad CGI Gator

12th opus in Danny Draven´s directing career, filled with naive irony and parody/self-parody as the typically misguided B-movie spoof is, but instead of falling face first into the routinary trappings of "self-aware" comedies (that are everything but that) this one creates a schizophrenic and bland pseudo-satire of the genre with more formal considerations than usual, less malicious than Brett Kelly with his sardonic sharks, but still delivering blows to every stereotype, convention and trope of the genre. In the end, this is still a satire that lacks focus and a concrete objective that can give it a sense.

Featuring goofy and telegraphed comedy that comes out of a decidedly malnourished and elemental script done with intentional simplicity, with the nauseatingly stereotypical characters that parody the ones from the industrial horror movie formula. You can trace back the evolution of the subgenre as far back as the italian Jaws rip off Killer Crocodile (1989) with it´s lethargic anti-adventure, going through Lake Placid (1999) with winks that demolished the fourth wall and a comedic tone, but perhaps the heaviest influence is Tobe Hooper´s schlock flick Crocodile (2000), taking the concept of giving the main killer animal a richer personality than it´s human leads, while expanding upon the genre game Hooper played with by exaggerating the defects of the way of representing the animal on screen, stretching it's inverisimilitude to cartoonish levels. If Tobe made his Crocodile crash through walls then Draven made his Gator ring the doorbell. The film is filled with touches like these, such as when the Gator levitates via his special effects superpowers and eats a jock. Images that undoubtedly tickled the fancy of a master of surreal fantasy like Charles Band.

Speaking of Band, this movie finally goes after the overabundance of CGI in mainstream cinema (and why not, in productions by competing low budget companies too) he often complains about. However, it comes off as half baked, every solid attempt at creativity is dulled by a wonky pace and an off beat tone. It only slightly uses irony to satirize the state of popular cinema but one could argue that Asylum and other companies with their outlandish mockbusters are already Hollywood's biggest parody makers, making Bad CGI Gator a graceless deviation in the Full Moon catalog.

I had to watch this because of the title. I do amateur CGI. It's almost all bad. There's little sign of improvement. If I were smarter, I'd pick a new hobby.

So, here's the plot: three sorority sisters (one decent) and three frat bros (one decent) go to a Cabin in the Woods to get drunk. I can get drunk in my bedroom, but hey, kids these days. The cabin's by a lake. It's a horror movie. There's "Gator" in the title. What do you think happens next? The gator rips the limbs off of the unlikable ones. I don't even consider this a spoiler.

Does anything else happen? No. What else would you want to see happen? It's a horror movie about a poorly animated CGI alligator.

First thing first: is the CGI, in actuality, bad? It *is* bad. But it's not as bad as a lot of CGI in days past. The gator isn't animated very well. Its limbs don't seem to touch the ground. Eventually, the filmmakers give up on pretending that the gator should interact with the ground at all. The electrical effects are also bad. But, hey, it's a lot better than the crap I've made. When you ignore the whole animation and electricity things, it looks pretty good. And who cares? It's not about whether the gator's legs touch the ground. It's about the fact that they don't. And also, it's about how people that use internet acronyms in everyday speech are ripped into small pieces.

Really, this is as B-movie as you'd expect, but Gator never pretends to be anything else. And thanks to the wonder of modern tools, the production quality is still great (well, minus the skating gator legs.) Plus, the acting is certainly good enough. Maddie Lane does an especially good job. Probably the weakest point is the writing, where they earn a few chuckles out of this horror-comedy, but never any guffaws. But, that's not a major criticism for a film that aims as low as Gator.

Don't expect Sophie's Choice, and I think you'll enjoy yourself. It's only like sixty minutes long. What do you have to lose?

Of course with a title such as "Bad CGI Gator", then this movie was without a doubt a movie that I just had to sit down and watch. And when I saw that it was Full Moon Features that made the movie, my expectations went from none to some. Needless to say that I had never heard about the movie, prior to stumbling upon it by random chance.

The storyline is pretty straightforward, if not actually rather generic, for a movie about young people at a lakeside resort where a killer alligator is prowling. The movie never does take itself overly serious, so writer Zalman Band did actually put together a script and storyline that proved to be making fun of itself and being super cheesy, and that made it all the more fun to watch.

I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, and that is something I enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. And I will say that they had a good cast ensemble, despite the fact that I didn't like most of the characters at all. But they performed quite well in bringing the characters to life on the screen.

The majority of the character gallery in "Bad CGI Gator" is really horrible, but I mean that in a good way. I am sure that writer Zalman Band did that on purpose; making the characters into caricatures of today's youth, with their pathetic addiction to social media and mobile phones, and the way they talk and act. The only two non-annoying characters in the movie was Sam (played by Michael Bonini) and Hope (played by Maddie Lane). So thumbs up to Zalman Band for that accomplishment.

Just as the majority of the characters were insanely annoying, as was their dialogue. No surprise there. But again, thumbs up to writer Zalman Band for that accomplishment.

You get to see a lot of things that you never have seen before, nor thought you would ever get to see, such as an alligator instantaneously grow in size because it gets electrocuted, a flying alligator, an alligator swallowing a grown adult in on gulp, an alligator burping.

The title of the movie delivers exactly what it promises, because the CGI animated alligator looks bad. But it is so bad that it is campy, fun and goofy to look at. And you can't help but laugh at how bad it actually looks.

"Bad CGI Gator" is a movie that is campy and cheesy enough to actually make for a fun viewing. However, you're not in for anything grand here. Nor is it a movie that warrants more than just a single viewing.

My rating of director Danny Draven's 2023 movie "Bad CGI Gator" lands on a five out of ten stars.

The makers of this movie clearly didn't have enough of a budget to make a convincing monster. But when it's a monster movie, that's kind of a problem. Even if they might have successfully hidden the bad special effects or pooh-poohed it away once or twice, that still wouldn't have been enough. So the film makers just embraced it and wrote the plot of the entire movie around it. You see, this isn't just a poorly constructed monster, it's a tiny alligator that experienced a bunch of short-circuiting school laptops and becomes... Bad CGI Gator. So the CGI is bad, the plot is winking at you bad, and the characters are bad and irredeemably stupid. That's not to say that the acting is bad. The actors do a good job of making characters who are over the top idiots, even for a horror movie, seem realistic. There's a guy who calls himself an alpha male who is just a weak bully, a woman who makes the most bland social media content (and tahini dip) ever, a couple that is sex crazed but not in a healthy way, a stereotypical nerd who acts like a creep and kind of wants to see most everyone die, and the sort-of good girl who thinks that a guy being creepy is flattering and could have saved someone from the gator but is so self-absorbed that she keeps forgetting that the other person even exists. Face it, all of these characters are bad people. There are just a few who are less bad than the others. And that -- and the ridiculousness of a gator who defies reality -- is what makes the film entertaining.

It lives up to its title with the absolutely worst CGI, I have ever seen in my lifey, progressively worsening in each scene. The deliberate horridness of the effects becomes a bizarre delight.

The characters are intentionally unlikable, ensuring a guilt-free thrill as they fall prey to the PS1 Lara Croft's worst nightmare.

Dark humor is top notch and sticks around to the very last moments.

However, the anticlimactic ending left me disappointed. While the whole movie is built upon cheese, taking "so bad it's good" to its ultimate form, the boring conclusion feels like "so bad it's just bad".