Movie Review: Alligator X aka Xtinction: Predator X

Runtime: 90 minutes
Rating: NR
Release Date: August 18, 2010
Director: Amir Valinia

Laura le Crois (Elena Lyons, Club Dread) comes back to her home town to discover that her father is missing. He owes the bank a ton of money, and they are threatening to foreclose on his land. She has a brief run-in with Charles LeBlanc (Mark Sheppard, Supernatural, Warehouse 13), a doctor who offers to buy the land before the bank forecloses. After the two fight and he leaves, she meets with Sheriff Tim Richards (Lochlyn Munro, The Terror Experiment, The Tooth Fairy). Richards reveals that LeBlanc has started acting a little weird and doing experiments in the swamp. Do you see where this is going?

A young man and his girlfriend stop by and hire the boat. Since her dad is missing, Laura decides to lead them on a swamp tour herself, despite not being in the swamp in years. Naturally, the boat dies in the middle of nowhere and they find themselves hunted by a giant alligator. Laura begins wondering if her ex-husband, the infamous doctor, had a role in the genetic engineering of the monster.

I absolutely love creature features, especially bad ones made for television and those that go straight to DVD. Alligator X should be right up my alley, but it was so bad that I spent most of the movie rolling my eyes. Some of the reviews I read claimed that Lyons was a great actress, but I thought she did a terrible job. I’ve seen her on several television shows, most notable USA High as a teen, and she always seems to play the same snobby, stuck up character. Even here, when she’s supposed to be a poor girl who made good, she still comes across as incredibly snobby.

The one bright spot in Munro. Munro made a career playing a variety of roles in straight to DVD and low budget films, and he seems to have a preference for horror films. He actually does a believably job as portraying a man who is still in love with the girl he loved in high school, and you can believe that he is willing to do anything to save her.

Sheppard is almost as good in the film. He seems to know that this is a low budget movie, but he still puts his best foot forward. He does a great job playing a man who might have feelings for his ex-wife even though he wants to keep working on something that will change the world. If everything in the movie was as good as the acting of those two, Alligator X could be a much better movie.