Sci-Fi Channel Original Review: Lake Placid 2
Published May 01, 2007
A sequel approximately no one asked for, Lake Placid 2 brings loose ties to the original 1999 camp fest during its cable debut Thursday, May 3, on the SciFI Channel at 9 p.m. (EDT). This is a movie not trying to be campy because it’s not trying at all.
Only one character has any connection to the original film, supposedly the sister of Betty White’s Delores Bickerman. Cloris Leachman takes the role as Sadie, who is following in Delores’s footsteps by raising more crocs. This might as well be the sequel to Sci-Fi’s Crocodile series otherwise. At least those schlock fests made some attempt at being entertaining.
Apparently, in eight years since the first attack, the giant crocodile has been forgotten and is nothing more than a myth. A massive, oversized flesh eater would generally be hard to forget in that span of time. A short conversation explains the growth spurt late in the film, and also revels there’s more than one massive creature romping around town.
While hardly a classic, Lake Placid did have a sharp dark sense of humor and some decent special effects. In this sequel, neither of those work. Brief laughs are random and forced. The CG special effects fail miserably, rarely intercutting with the actors properly. They hardly even look like a crocodile, featuring the thicker snout of an alligator. Over-the-top gore is the sole reason to stick around for the creature attacks.
David Flores, the director responsible for disasters like S.S. Doomtrooper makes zero improvements here. For those who have previously viewed a sci-fi/horror movie, you can pick out which characters will die in the first 15 minutes. Even the order in which they meet their fate is fairly routine. There’s not an ounce of originality here.
Even going in with the expectations of a typical Sci-Fi Channel original, Lake Placid 2 is a shameless cash-in on the name. If it has some redeeming values, good luck trying to find them.
- Sci-Fi Channel Original Review: Lake Placid 2
- Published: May 01, 2007
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Action, Video: Horror, Video: SF, Video: Television
- Part of a feature: Sci-Fi TV Films
- Writer: Matt Paprocki
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Comments
The Good News: This was actually a pretty good creature feature. One of the best things is that it plays up the previous knowledge and manages to expand upon it. The end of the previous one set-up the fact that babies had been born, and this one here is where the children come back and strike out against intruders as adults. The constant mention of characters and situations being brought up simply tie the events together, and a rather decent attempt is made to make the constant interaction in the forest look similar, ensuring another small bit of continuity. That includes the next great feature, the different crocodiles. This is one of the few films that has several individuals of the threat for the characters to get around. Having four crocs to deal with is a pretty clever move, allowing it to drop the tiresome "invincible creature" motif and actually make some semblance of reality when they can kill off one of the creatures early on without making it seem like the characters are out of danger or the crocs are weak. That itself is a really great idea no matter what the angle played. Another really smart move is to make the existence of the creatures known fairly early in the film, as it does here, allowing for a lot of croc screen-time and playing in to the option of letting one of the other ones take over if one is killed option that it uses since there's more than one. With it being fairly obvious to the characters about twenty minutes or so into the film that there's something huge and vicious in the lake, and for this to be obvious to them is quite nice, as the search for them leads to some really great scenes. The search for the first croc on the lake is a nice action highlight, as the different tactics used to try to slow it down make some nice little action scenes in it. There's even a little back-and-forth as the croc puts up a valiant struggle and manages to take out several vehicles of the police force before being brought down when it seemed like it would've been the police force which had the upper hand. The assault on the campground is one of the highlights, as there's a lot of action with the first couple traps and the ensuing attack is nicely handled. It gets to it's parts, though, when it goes for the jungle attacks, as the assaults on the stranded campers comprise so many great scenes and moments that there's a lot to like in them. Handled with great skill and even allowing some creepy moments to come into play, these are simply great and really make the movie, along with the first lake capture, and make this a really worthy sequel.
The Bad News: There isn't a lot here that isn't to like. One of the only points is that, as usual, the crocodiles and the gore are completely CGI and don't look even the slightest bit real. It's not that they look off or unrealistic, as they look remarkably close to what they're supposed to be. It's simply the fact that the tone and appearance of the creatures are quite obviously not there. It's a bit distracting to see that the main threat of the film isn't there, and as it's so easily apparent of this, there's very little confusion about whether or not the effects are CGI or not. It's actually impossible to feel any threat of the crocs due to this state, which is just a common problem that so many similar films have. That the gore, which should've been a big highlight isn't that shocking or revolting because of the CGI aspects is another flaw, and just look fake, especially since the crocs have so much screen-time to get to see all the fake-ness of their design. Beyond these, this is an enjoyable film, but they will make it hard for some to get into the film.
The Final Verdict: While not up to the level of the first one, it's still a reasonably entertaining creature feature. The worse that can be said about it is that it's computer graphics are quite obviously fake, yet real creature feature fans won't mind this one bit and have some fun with it, so this is really only recommended to those kinds of viewers.










I laughed when I saw you covered this show! Let me clarify, only because the movie was so bad I wasn't going to admit to ever seeing it - but my 8 yr. old wanted to watch it so we did. I was amazed at how bad acting can really be - and the CG effects were laugh out loud cheap-o funny. Too, after the crocs would devour someone, usually with blood spurting, the rest of the group would act like it was no big deal. Nobody cared if anyone got munched or mangled. Man, it was a bizarre flik and could have been a cult classic if only handled by a director with some skills, and actors who have some craft... Omitting Leachman, she was the best in the group. Sadly we watched the whole thing, as I'm seeing you did too. :)
To follow this hilarious endeavor of a horror movie we watched "FrankenFish". At least the acting was one step above, but it was good horror cheese too.