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.
