2018 Lake Placid: Legacy

• Director: Darrell Roodt
• Writers: Johnathon Lloyd Walker, Matt Venables, and Jeremy Smith
• Stars: Katherine Barrell, Tim Rozon, Sai Bennett, and Joe Pantoliano
• Runtime: 93 minutes (or 1 hour 33 minutes)
• YouTube Trailer Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFH_aJRBcOY

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a sequel to “Lake Placid vs Anaconda” as well as a sequel to the Lake Placid standalone movies. A group of eco-warrior urban explorers FAFO when they break into a fenced off decommissioned research compound. It wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but it’s well put together. It moves well and entertains.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open in Seattle, WA, where four people sit in a tiny car and conspire about exposing corporate greed. And urban exploration. And hacking. As they break into Wenoco Corp, we cut back and forth with a man running through the woods, terrified. Wenoco Corp looks like a Star Trek set on the inside. The eco-terrorists drop a “Wenco = Death” banner off the roof. Meanwhile, something unseen eats the man in the woods. Credits roll.

Alice doesn’t approve of the urban explorer/eco-terrorist stuff that her sister Jade leads. Sam, Billy, and Spencer are just in it for the rush. Sam gets a challenge from Dane for “one last quest” that has a $100,000 prize for the first one in. The place they need to go is off-limits, even deleted from Google Earth. It’s supposed to be a place where a toxic spill happened twenty-something years ago. Pennie and Travis don’t want to go anywhere near a place with radiation, if that story is even true.

The group arrives at the electric fence, and there’s definitely no radiation. The electric fence doesn’t work or is turned off for some reason. When they get inside, they do soil samples; there’s no contamination here, either. Why the fence?

Pennie and Travis drop the others off at a dock and promise to wait 30 minutes before they leave them. The others walk through a construction site. They soon find Dane’s camp, but Dane isn’t there. The place is wrecked, but they find a camera. It shows Dane being chased by some kind of monster. Then they find body parts, but Spencer thinks it’s all a prank– until they find half of Gomez, Dane’s assistant. They all run back to the boat, which suffers an accident, along with Travis.

Everyone talks, whines, screams, and argues all at the same time. The group finds a dark tunnel with a grate that’s been broken through and decides it’s a good idea to go inside. The group gets split up. Billy, Spencer, and Pennie head back to the dock while Sam, Alice, Jade, go deeper into the facility.

The inside group finds a lab with power while the outside group tries to boost their cellphone signal to call for help on the dock. Inside, the group learns that the facility was breeding giant crocodiles for some reason. Outside, Spencer and Pennie get eaten.

Sam and his group find Dane, still alive, down in the tunnels. They also run into Henderson, whom Dane has tied up for getting them all into this situation. He used to work for the corporation and explains about the genetically modified formerly extinct species that was supposed to cure cancer. He sounds believable with his motivations.

Billy calls 911 with his boosted phone, but he’s doubtful they could trace to source. Billy then loses his head, so he’s not gonna try again. In the confusion, Henderson sneaks away. Everyone else has to swim through a flooded tunnel for no obvious reason. The monster catches Dane and tears him up.

Henderson, in the meantime, wanders right into the big crocodile’s main nest and is torn in half.

Sam comes up with a cockamamie plan to blow up the whole place by sacrificing himself with canisters of propane as the two girls run back the way they came. Sam’s plan fails non-spectacularly.

Alice faces the monster eye-to-eye, but then Jade gets in one of the construction machines and starts it right up after being outside, abandoned for twenty-five years. She pins the crocodile and then covers it in fuel. The croc goes boom!

The two girls then swim off the island, but then we see they’re being followed…

Brian’s Commentary

It plays fast and loose with the lore from the previous films, as the whole corporate angle only marginally applied to the “Vs” film. On the other hand, the lab and facility were nice sets and they probably hoped there would be more sequels.

There’s supposed to be just one crocodile, but it’s both simultaneously inside the tunnel and out eating Billy at the same time. Its size also fluctuates depending on where it is.

It’s all fairly predictable in every way, but it wasn’t boring. If you’re looking for more CGI-croc action, this movie… exists.

Kevin’s Commentary

The poster is especially cool for this one.

I had a fundamental dislike of the eco-arrogant characters, which made it difficult to root for them. The croc tended to move from place to place and size to size as plot required (though we do find out at the very end it wasn’t really just one). And it wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before.

But those issues aside, I thought the whole thing was pretty well made and entertaining. The pacing is good without much down time, and the settings are great.