Review: "Alligator 2; The Mutation"
A full eleven years after the first movie was made, someone thought it was a good idea to take the giant gator out of its cage.
Two fishermen go out at night in the hopes of bringing home a big catch. They don't know that while they are looking for fish, something in the water is looking for them. In an instant, the fishermen are dragged under the water and killed.
The next morning, the daughter and wife of one of the fishermen go to the police to report them missing. The police are dismissive until Detective David Hodges steps in. He listens to their story and assures the mother and daughter that he is "on the case" and will figure this out.
As Det. Hodges begins to dig into what may, or may not, have happened to the two missing fishermen, he discovers that it is, quite possibly, an actual monster beneath the city. Unable to wrap his head around what he finds, Hodges looks further into the disappearances and realizes that the incident isn't half as bad as the cover-up intended to sweep it under the rug.
So this was the actual sequel that I initially intended to watch. The first Alligator movie was fine. In fact, I remember really enjoying the first movie. Good cast, fun writing, and a decently well enough done rubber monster. Alligator 2... not so much. The cast is full of "Oh hey, it's that guy" actors (shout out to some MST3K favs), but no one is really a standout, except a quick appearance by Kane "Jason Voorhees" Hodder. The plot is essentially every single crappy monster movie plot. There's a thing that was created by some corporate oversight; it gets far worse over time, and everyone, even the mayor, is involved in trying to make it go away. Waiting more than a decade to release a sequel to an okay creature feature was maybe not the best of choices.
I personally think that was the exact reason why this film didn't do anything for me. Granted, I watched the original and the sequel a couple years of each other, but it just felt like they were out of step with each other. Or maybe it just felt like it was some weird cash-grab far too late. Either way, there isn't enough in this sequel to really warrant anyone seeking it out.
I think the thing that bummed me out the most about Alligator 2: The Mutation was that the title makes no sense in the context. This gator was no bigger, badder, or more deadly than the last. In fact, the way that it was shot, using an actual gator for a lot of the practical scenes, made the gator seem smaller and less intimidating than the original rubber monster. Nothing is egregiously bad, and nothing comes to mind that was good enough to watch again. After realizing that I had watched the wrong sequel the first time, and then watching the correct sequel, I feel like I should have left things where they were.
Comments