The Flood

It's pretty easy for you to find out if you will enjoy this movie. Just imagine yourself a SyFy-Tag on the cover and take a quick look at the ratings. You have some bad effects and some over the top badass characters with perfectly chiseled faces and an attitude. The movie also adds some familiar actors who have their best acting days behind them like Casper Van Dien (Starship Troopers) and Nicky Whelan (Hall Pass).

There's not much else you have, some action and a semi interesting plot that gets interrupted by a bunch of deadly alligators. While the effects are pretty bad, I guess I have seen worse and if you don't mind these unrealistic looking CGI alligator's and you typically enjoy SyFy level movies you might enjoy this one, but if you want an action packed and well-made thriller you better watch Crawl and skip The Flood. [3,9/10]

With the release of 'Bait' in 2012 and 'Crawl' in 2019, and now 'The Flood' in 2023 it looks as if the industry is heading towards a new genre: flood/creature feature. 'The Flood' sees a very similar premise to the aforementioned films, only it wasn't nearly as effective or well made.

When weather conditions during a hurricane become too dangerous to drive, a bus escorting five dangerous criminals has to take a detour to the closest prison. The prison is run by feisty Sheriff Newman (Nicky Whelan). I couldn't help but think they wanted to make a heroin out of Newman in the vein of Nancy (Blake Lively) from 'The Shallows' or Sheriff Julie Forester (Elizabeth Shue) from 'Piranha 3D' - only Nicky Whelan doesn't have what it takes to pull it off. I found her much too weak to portray the heroin.

Another four unsavory criminals raid the prison in order to free one of their own, and a shootout ensues with the gang taking over the prison. However, the police station is flooded and soon the alligators find a way in - and they're hungry! And so begins their ordeal - trying to survive. We have a lot of characters for such a short movie, and set mostly in the police station, it did feel a bit cluttered. Sure, the alligators soon start eliminating some of the characters, but even so there simply were too many characters.

The film also suffers from poor acting, poor dialogue, poor visuals, a poor script, and just generally not that great on any level. There's hardly any suspense at all and I blame lack of enthusiasm from the cast and the director. This could have been so much better! Oh, and another thing; one of the characters suddenly returns during the final act after being viciously attacked by an alligator earlier on (presumed to be dead). And guess what, he's not even limping! In fact, he has no blood on him - not even a scratch!!! That's when it hit me again I was watching a B-movie...

Unfortunately, 'The Flood' got much worse towards the end. Rather give this one a skip. Watch 'Crawl' instead.

This movie felt like a torture device more than anything. Before the opening credits roll, we are greeted by some very unlikable horribly acted out characters that we know nothing about, nor care about. Anyway, that opener just sets the tone for the rest of it; it gets no better. What you see in the first 30 seconds is what the rest of it is like. Nothing changes, just more random people enter the badly written scenes, act them out horribly and die by a stealth 50ft alligator that always ends up getting punched in the face, literally. They should have called this movie gator boxing. At least that would have been an original something in it!!

Acting is D tier at best (and im very generous here), dialogue lines written by equally apt people, CIG is 90s level, reality and logic just do not exist not that those would have helped much at this point. The movie is an amalgamation of everything somebody saw over their lifetime. HARD RAIN, LAKE PLACID, SHARKNADO, DEEP BLUE SEA, and so many others.

Not an original thought was put behind anything on screen, there is no production value either. Camera work is acceptable but every angle and scene cut is generic as it gets - it has no style of its own. I was trying to find something good about it and i failed. At the end it begs the question, why was this made? There are stupid movies that are entertaining (COCAINE BEAR), but this is dull and annoying with nothing going for it. Frankly if the acting was just an inch above the deepest pit of bland and forced, it might have been watchable. But you just cannot stomach these people on screen for that long.

Just skip it. 2/10 because i was totally rooting for the gator every time he came out of nowhere right between 20 of them and ate one of them up before escaping using its teleportation device!

The only thing missing in this movie is Steven Seagal. You have been warned.

Long version: Stereotype bonanza.

Very, very bad CGI.

Abysmally bad acting.

Botoxed sheriff.

Dialog written and reviewed by simians.

Nonsensical animal (and human) behavior.

Cheapest location possible.

Made for the Great! Action Movies channel.

All the ingredients are present to make a timeless classic out of this "movie". All but one, Steven Seagal.

Hopefully The Flood 2 will include Steven in its stellar cast.

P. S.

Any reference or similarities to Crawl are there only to make potential viewers think it could be comparable or similar. It is not.

Twenty-six years after Casper Van Dien fought alien bugs in Starship Troopers, he's back battling massive CGI critters in The Flood, only the special effects are a lot worse and, quite possibly, so is Van Dien's acting.

Van Dien plays convict Russell Cody, who, along with several other criminals, is being transported to a new prison during a hurricane; due to the weather, the prison bus is forced to take a detour to a nearby police station, where the cons are to spend the night. Meanwhile, a group of heavily armed baddies break into the station to try and free Cody unaware that some huge bulletproof alligators, displaced by the rising waters, have found a new home in the building...

The Flood has clearly been inspired by Alexandre Aja's Crawl, but director Brandon Slagle has neither the budget nor the talent to do the premise justice. His film features terrible writing and abysmal acting, and boasts digital effects that would shame a Playstation (even the rain is digital), but even more distracting than the bad CGI is the botox pout of female sheriff Jo Newman; I can't take her seriously as a tough cop when she looks like a duck.

2.5/10, rounded down to 2 for expecting the viewer to believe that a botoxed blonde could beat up muscle-bound convicts twice her size.