It’s been an incredible year for me writing here for HORROR PRESS. I’ve seen beautiful films about loss, and horrifying films about the destruction of the truth. Talked to directors and writers about their deepest passion projects and where they came from. Explored movies about loneliness, grief, hate, and love. And now, I get to talk about a 50-minute-long short film focused on a terribly rendered CGI alligator, called Bad CGI Gator.
A Short Runtime With A Simple Plot
Somewhere in South Georgia, a lakeside cabin retreat goes awry: when a dopey group of college students/influencers/all-around awful people drop their laptops into a lake as part of a social media stunt, they create a new terrible semi-aquatic evil: a giant, bad CGI alligator.
And no, to my lovely editor, James-Michael, I didn’t forget to type the rest of the plot summary. That’s it, that’s the plot. It is 50 minutes to be fair, and moreover, it’s Unity Asset: The Movie, so how long could it really be? I just appreciate it didn’t try to overstay its welcome with a bloated runtime.
In terms of production, it isn’t too far of a cry from what we’ve gotten as of late from Charles Band’s House of Imagineers. They rented out a cabin with a few dollars and a dream, got together some actors, and banged out shooting really quickly to minimize costs. The script might be the film’s weakest aspect, with a lot of misplaced slang that went out of fashion two years ago, being forced out by actors who have been told to play the worst caricature of obnoxious internet influencers hocking skinny tea and vitamin gummies, which they at least are able to do.
A Terribly Good Gator Highlights This Movie
The titular CGI alligator floats above everything like it’s about to bust through the fabric of reality, and that goofy low-effort look works for humor when he starts breaking the laws of physics while eating people. The music is almost certainly all stock, sounding like the copyright-free jams of Kevin Macleod without all the technical skill that goes into those. And the only time the budget is on the loose is whenever you get some passable effects in the alligator attacks, which I can’t lie, are pretty fun regardless of everything else packaging it.
So, if it’s technically poor quality, why do I like this?
This is the part where I tell you I absolutely buried the lead on what this article is really about, which is my own biases. I try to divorce them from a lot of the articles I write, but Bad CGI Gator is one of those I just can’t leave alone even if it was unfunny in every possible way. I appreciate the creation of Bad CGI Gator, not because there is a lot of bright franchise potential here, but because it reminds me a lot of the things I enjoyed when I was younger. See, SyFy has been on a kick of airing big studio films rather than channel original movies for a while now, so I get a bit of a fuzzy feeling whenever I see something that looks and sounds like an Asylum Studios film that would have been on TV in the early 2010s. Something like an Atlantic Rim, or a Megapython vs. Gatoroid, or if I’m really lucky, an Arachnoquake.
A Callback to the Syfy of Yesteryear
Films like this don’t charm me because it’s self-aware, or really meta, or even successfully trying to make synthetic “so bad it’s good” material; that is to say, trying to home-grow an incompetently made movie’s charm gets you zero points from me. It’s charming because I grew up with a lot of really, really, REALLY bad SyFy originals; if you miss that feeling of turning on the channel to a mockbuster or a shark film when home sick from school, or tuning in with nothing to do on a Friday night, you’re my kind of person, and Bad CGI Gator is our type of greasy, familiar comfort food.
I doubt director Danny Draven actually thought intentionally making your film bad guarded against genuine criticism, but I’m also not prone to railing relentlessly on a movie for being bad. So, what can I say is legitimately good out of the comforting warmth of this dumpster fire? When it comes to the acting, we get a nice bit of energy from Ben Vandermey playing the prime fratboy Chad (because of course his name is Chad). He looks like the only person having serious fun here; he hammed up his acting to the Nth degree, and I hope he had a blast filming.
I also have to give a shout-out to Matthew Mark Hunter and James Bell Props for doing up some decent fake blood and fake body parts for the gator to tear off. And also, Tom Gavin, because all gaffers deserve more love.
Everybody else, you did okay too, go hit the showers. Get ready to make Bad CGI Gator vs Bad CGI Crocodile, cause we both know you wrote it down on a whiteboard while thinking up sequels.
Should You Watch Bad CGI Gator?
If you go into this expecting anything really good, I have to point you to the parable of the scorpion and the frog: you knew it was a Full Moon movie called Bad CGI Gator when you started carrying it across the river. It’s still only 50 minutes, so even if you don’t like it, it’s not that much of a slog to get through and still manages to pull some laughs out for how absolutely goofy some of the performances are (and of course, yes, the funny gator model). If you have time to kill or need a bumper for your next bad horror movie marathon, put on Bad CGI Gator.
