Methgator

Another day, another Asylum movie, this time their rip-off of COCAINE BEAR. This one sees an alligator consuming a shipment of drugs and going on the rampage, but otherwise it's business as usual and no different from any other of these cheesy B-movies made in the last couple of decades. For an Asylum flick, the CGI isn't quite the worst you'll see; it's not impressive but it's not diabolical either. The worst thing about this is the cast, full of no-names giving shady performances. At least in the glory days of The Asylum they used to bring in some former Hollywood greats in cameos to liven things up, but that's fallen by the wayside these days.

After the success of the surprising smash hit cocaine bear, syfy decided to put their own spin on things and I enjoyed this venture. Deep in the floridan swamp two men are smuggling methanphedimen when the sheriff and another man arrive, one of the bags gets into the water only for a hungry alligator to get it and this is when we meet methgater. Not as bad as cgi as it always is, not great but still good. The mayor tries to cover it up by sending his own men until the sheriffs son dante gets a team together to destroy them. Theres some fun action in this and I enjoyed the acting in places. A pretty good attempt by them and a film that was pretty entertaining.

After a botched drug deal, a group of Florida police officers find that the contents of the shipment have been accidentally ingested by a local alligator and turned into a ravenous killing machine forcing them to stop the creature before it disrupts a series of upcoming holiday celebrations.

Overall, this was a fun and generally likable cheesy creature feature. Among its better features is a solid series of storylines that manage to provide a great foundation for the type of simplistic creature feature this emerges as. With the opening immediately setting up the idea of the gator taking the drugs from the local drug runners and then explaining how it goes crazy with the unrealistic behavior as a byproduct of the addictive qualities it brings to him as he goes around looking at the various drug labs around town creating a race to infiltrate the remaining labs so that they can save the town. This is a fun setup with the idea of trying to stop the gator bringing about several different tactics to stop it and getting tons of citizens involved in a logical enough manner. As a result, that lets this one go for a slew of immensely fun and cheesy attack scenes bringing the creature into high-energy confrontations. Based on the addiction it has and the desire to consume more, this is then used as a means of allowing the gator to perform unnatural movements like the land stalking going after the different hunters looking to track it down, the attack on the communications tower and destroying it, and the fine attack on the various meth compounds around the backwoods part of the town. It's all generally fun enough leading to a fun and cheesy series of attacks in the finale where the gloriously fake-looking creature is let loose at the final battle involving some cheesy sequences and a fun riot leading to stopping the creature that gives it a lot to like. There are some issues here that bring this one down. One of the biggest drawbacks is a really useless and generally unnecessary cliche of using the corrupt authority figures trying to use their power and influence to keep things under wraps from the citizens to ensure they remain in power. This features a repeat of the storyline where the mayor of the town is perfectly aware of the drug problem in the town and the efforts being made to stop it yet goes along with the idea of keeping it around simply for the money it pays off which forces his hand in keeping the police from going after the group. While he plays it off like trying to prevent a panic on a town holiday, the whole idea is a cliche and ridiculous to even feature and comes off as warranted as expected. As well, the other factor here is a rather lame series of interludes featured that try to paint the town as an eccentric series of friendly locals but instead manage to just eat up the running time with some cringeworthy sequences. The interactions with the local hunters hoping for a chance at the bounty against the creature or the attempts of the crew to get deputized to go fight against it because they're the ones most familiar with the area are used as a means of trying to inject humor into the group but come off as awkward and unnecessary for what's going on. They easily could've been included less weirdly than they are as everything here is a bit weird how it all plays out with the overlong sequences being used to try being funny but it all comes off as cringey merely to stretch out the running time. These are enough to lower this one somewhat.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

SOMEBODY has to stand up for this wonderful studio, and I'm delighted to accept the assignment. Does no one watch a movie to be ENTERTAINED, with a big goofy grin on their face? If being The Ripoff Kings Of The Cinema is a crime, why was Roger Corman (the former King) handed a career Oscar?? This 89m of trashy dee-light may be a naked ripoff of Cocaine Bear, but that film left me needing MORE of a delicious new "drugged beasties" genre that The Asylum was primed and ready to deliver! You folks who are locked & loaded to give any Asylum film an automatic 2-star rating (without even seeing it, I suspect) have no place in my life. Let the trash cinema congregation say AMEN!!

Of course I wasn't harboring much of any expectations to a movie titled "Methgator", but ever since I heard about it, I wanted to sit down and watch it. Of course this was something that was spawned in the wake of the "Cocaine Bear" movie. And with this movie being made by The Asylum, you know it is a mockbuster of aforementioned movie.

The storyline in the movie was adequate for a movie of this type and caliber. You pretty much know what you're in for here, and writers Lauren Pritchard and Joe Roche do deliver all the campy cheese that you can eat. And that actually makes "Methgator" a movie proved to be watchable, despite all odds.

The whole part with the cheek slapping thing was just laughable. Even when you stumble upon it on the Internet, you can't help but laugh at the stupidity behind that "sport", and I use the word sport mockingly here, because slapping someone on the cheek until then are knocked out is not a sport, it is just downright stupidity. And why the writers opted to put that in the movie is just beyond my comprehension, but I suppose one or both of them enjoy watching that on the Internet.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress in the movie. And that is usually something I do enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. I will say that the acting performances in "Methgator" were adequate, at least they were better than what I had expected.

Visually then "Methgator" was not a good movie. And even for a movie by The Asylum, it was pretty terrible CGI effects. And when you have a movie relying on a creature that is entirely CGI animated, you might want to throw a larger chunk of the budget at the CGI developers. The Asylum hadn't done that, and as such, the CGI animated gator in the movie was pretty terrible to look at most of the times.

"Methgator" is a movie that is suitable for a single viewing, then it will just quietly fade into oblivion.

My rating of director Christopher Ray's 2023 movie "Methgator" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.