Rogue

Radha Mitchell, Sam Worthington and Michael Vartan in Rogue

While trying to get through so many of the Academy Award nominated films, I decided to take a break with some mindless cinematic entertainment. Rogue was just what I needed. This real life monster movie requires no thinking or analyzing, just a strong stomach.

Michael Vartan stars as Pete McKell, a miserable American tourist writer on assignment in northern Australia. The airlines lost his luggage, the heat is unbearable, the flies are annoying as hell and the locals seem anything but friendly. He has been sent to report on a nature cruise down a crocodile infested river.

Kate, the tour guide, played by the adorable Radha Mitchell, gives bits of information on crocodiles as the boat passes by some scenic cliffs. After seeing a crocodile, one tourist asks, “Do you have many attacks on people?” to which Kate responds with a smile, “Tourists, occasionally.” She does not realize how true her words are about to become.

After witnessing a couple of distress flares upriver, Kate makes the decision to take the tour boat further upstream to investigate. What they find is a wrecked boat and a large crocodile, or should I say, the croc finds them. It damages the tour boat, forcing Kate to beach the boat on a small island in the river. The tide starts to rise and the croc starts to feast on the ever shrinking number of tourists.

Although by no means a true story, Rogue is based in reality. The size of the crocodile depicted here, although on the larger size, is quite normal. One scene called for Sam Worthington to fall into the river. Filmed on location, he refused to do the scene after the film crew heard of a nearby crocodile sighting. Greg Mclean, who wrote, directed and produced this film had to get into the river and swim halfway across and back before Worthington agreed to do the scene. After two takes, Worthington had enough.

Michael Vartan claimed that filming on location for most of the movie added greatly to his performance. Acting near real crocodiles and right up next to an animatronic one scared him to the point that he joked that he briefly lost control of some of his biological functions. A good horror film scares its audience or at least allows them to feel the fear being experienced by the characters, and in that, Rogue succeeds. Crocodiles are real living monsters and no matter how attractive the scenery, I have no plans to visit any crocodile infested waters.