Reviews: Lake Placid (1999) Movie Review
Genres: Horror, Sci-Fi, Action, Comedy, Monsters
Subgenres: Comedy, Creatures, Desolate, Sci-Fi, Wilderness, Wildlife
Our take on Lake Placid (1999) explores its plot, scares, and horror highlights to help fans decide if it deserves a place on their watchlist.
Lake Placid (1999) is a 1h 22-min rate R small budget American monster-horror-comedy film that grossed over $56 million at the box office with an estimated budget of $27 million. Director Steve Miner (Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Forever Young (1992)) did a remarkable job executing this fantastic lake monster movie. This horrifying film made me a little scared to enter lakes for a good bit of time. Lake monster fans will have a feast with this movie as the editing, directing, music, backing score and cinematography was top notch. Charm, appeal, decapitations, and humor was not a problem in this film as there was no shortage of it.
Lake Placid revolves around a group of people that his bent on capturing/killing the 30-foot-long crocodile that likes to eat humans that get a little too close to Black Lake, Maine, United States. Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda - Jackie Brown (1997), The Godfather: Part III (1990), A Simple Plan (1998), Kiss of the Dragon (2001)) is a paleontologist who was assigned to investigate the few deaths where the bodies were chomped in half in Maine. Kelly talked her way into a ride with the wildlife gang into the lake after a tooth was found in one of the victims. Jack Wells (Bill Pullman - Independence Day (1996), Lost Highway (1997), The Equalizer (2014), While You Were Sleeping (1995)) and Sheriff Hank Keough are also tagging along, and they all soon discover that a gigantic crocodile resides in the lake.
Eccentric expert Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt - X-Men: First Class (2011), 2012 (2009), Love & Other Drugs (2010), Doctor Dolittle (1998)) joins the team after they did not believe that the crocodile was the culprit. Hector and Sheriff Hank (Brendan Gleeson - Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Troy (2004), Gangs of New York (2002), Braveheart (1995)) could not get along and as the tension rises, Hank would not mind feeding Hector to the crocodile. The group learns why the crocodile is so large after investigating it for about a week - you should not miss the scenes around the discovery.
The intense/tension level was high mostly throughout the movie as I did not know what to expect. The CGI crocodile which was also part live-prop worked well in this film and did not appear too fake. Countless lake monster movie came out after and before Lake Placid (1999), but Lake Placid was one of the best lake monster movies.
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Sources Used to Shape This Review
Insights in this review are drawn from director interviews, fan commentary, production notes, and long-form breakdowns across genre-specific platforms. Content is written uniquely and reviewed for accuracy.
- Lake Placid Rating Scores
- Our Score: 7/10
- Overall Score: 5.46/10
- IMDB: 5.8/10
- MetaCritic: 3.4/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 4.7/10
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