Lake Placid: The Final Chapter (2012)

This a very scary movie. The original Lake Placid is scarier. Lake Placid 2 is also scarier. Lake Placid 3 is also scarier. But still this movie is very scary. It has a great story line. It also had great acting. It also has great special effects. If you do not great scared of this movie then no movie will scary you. This is great monster movie. If you want to see a very scary movie. Then you need to see this movie. This a great movie. It a must see. Elisabeth R.o.h.m is a great actress. Y.a.n.c.y Butler is a great actress. Paul N.i.c.h.o.l.l.s is a great actor. Poppy Lee Friar is a great actress. Benedict Smith is a great actor. Caroline Ford is a great actress.

Director Don Michael Paul and screenwriter David Reed really do justice to this thrilling franchise with an outstanding production featuring a very strong cast. Elizabeth Rohm gives one of her best performances yet as the sheriff and mother bent on protecting the children and destroying the monstrous crocodiles that threaten their existence. Outstanding support is furnished by Robert Englund with Yancy Butler providing much needed comedy relief. This is a very dark and horrific film featuring some shocking sequences that may haunt audience members for the rest of their lives. One scene with an innocent young girl snared in a trap and hanging from her ankles while being savaged by alligators is deeply disturbing. That is only one of several terrifying incidents depicted in graphic detail and without mercy. However, the blooding is in no way gratuitous and serves the purpose of motivating Rohm and Butler to take enormous risks to complete their mission. Excellent cinematography and startling special effects help immensely to make this one of the years most truly frightening films. It is, in the end, Rohm's power house performance that will really engage the viewer and capture their unwavering attention. The fear, rage, and emotional turmoil of her character is all too real and Rohm has never been better in any role. It is tremendous work and should have garnered her an Emmy nomination at least.

Reba from the third installment wakes up in the supermarket where the final bloodbath took place. A giant croc approaches her, but Reba lets it know who is the boss.Some time is elited. Reba is now working for the EPA, not entirely of her own volition (work for us or go to jail, that sort of thing). The new law is Sheriff Giove. Giove, Reba, and the 'tree hugger' Dennis capture a small croc for study using an anesthetic dart. They return to the shore and talk to the folks who are building and maintaining the electric fence around the lake. This includes Loflin.The professional poacher Jim Bickerman and cohorts approach the same point when fewer people are present, then break in to kill at least one croc. They beat up Loflin's son Max to get there.Giove sets up a chick flick night with her daughter Chloe, but Chloe goes off on a fun outing with a busload of other late teenagers. The bus goes through the gate opened by Bickerman and his allies. They tell ghost stories and have make out sessions. Giove, meanwhile, gets closer to Loflin.The next morning, the party group at the lake is missing a member, and they call the sheriff. The sheriff, Loflin, and Reba arrive at the now-closed gate, and talk things over with the engineer who closed it. They attempt to rescue the idiots, er, the party goers.During the process, they meet Dennis again, who was working on his project, and not at all helping the overall order of the proceedings.Will Loflin be re-united with his son Max? Will the sheriff and her daughter survive? Will there be enough crocs left over for Lake Placid: the Final Chapter, part II? -----Scores-----Cinematography: 8/10 Mostly quite good, but not the CGI.Sound: 7/10 The actors are well-miked, and the incidental music usually appropriate to the occasion whether it be creepy, foreboding, or pleasant.Acting: 6/10 Roehm, Butler, and Nichols were fine, as was England, though his role was on the short side. Benedict Smith, Daniel Black, and Ako Mitchell were not great, but were better than I expected.Screenplay: 5/10 The dialog was not great, but was much better than one usually gets in such films. The interconnections of the poacher with the first films was interesting, as was the connection of the poacher to the tree hugger.

It has long been my assertion that Betty White owes a lot to Lake Placid. When the horror film about a large crocodile terrorizing a small town was released in 1999, Betty White was far removed from her Golden Girls run and was bouncing around in various forgettable mid-season television pick-ups that went nowhere (anyone remember Maybe This Time? ). But then she took a role as the croc loving Delores Bickerman in the 1999's Lake Placid alongside Oliver Platt and Bridget Fonda and we were reminded just how fun, energetic and in-on-the-joke the aging actress could be.That was 14 years ago, and more unimportantly, three sequels ago as the fourth installment, Lake Placid: The Final Chapter was thrown out to DVD waters in 2013. Brought to us by the always high-standard revering Syfy Channel, Lake Placid: The Final Chapter was a TV Movie starring Yancy Butler (reprising her role from Lake Placid 3), Elisabeth Röhm, Poppy Lee Friar and Nightmare on Elm Street's Robert Englund in the continuing struggles of the Lake Placid area in keeping the crocodile deaths to a minimum.The plot for this latest endeavor is about as smart as a dung beetle. Picking up exactly -where the classic-should-have-been-nominated Lake Placid 3 left off, The Final Chapter has poacher Jim Bickerman (Englund) in rustler heaven when he arrives at the local lake that is seemingly populated by man-eating crocodiles.Complicating the dung beetles plot are a female sheriff (Röhm) and her wide-eyed daughter (Friar) who both find themselves in harm's way as the large aquatic tetrapods munch their CGI way through a body count that would have Jason Voorhees nod in appreciation.The Syfy Channel and their made-for-television films have a tendency to be McDonald's type meals. Quick and easy. And Lake Placid: The Final Chapter is both. It is barely 80 minutes long and it doesn't push any envelopes on its way to PG-13 glory.The kills are unimaginative and created with such bad CGI that your head might turn away from the screen not for the brutality, but for the saving grace of not having to watch ridiculously fake CGI blood splash so foolishly around edited body parts.It's hard to say that The Final Chapter is the worst Lake Placid of the series. But it is also hard to imagine that the idea has spawned three sequels. Lake Placid 4 is just as bad as Lake Placid 3 which was just barely worse that Lake Placid 2.If you have children on the cusp of appreciating more graphic and engrossing horror fare, Lake Placid: The Final Chapter might be a worthy babysitter that is not likely to do much damage to your child's sleep time. But for adults, this was a waste of 80 minutes where you wish the bullets fired on screen towards the crocodile's would be used against the producers who might suggest 'A New Chapter'.www.killerreviews.com