The good: The characters were believable and the tensions between them grew in believable ways, if you ignore the overall failed story structure. Acting and directing were good. Cinematography was quite good. For a movie made by a writer/director with a short resume, all surprisingly good. I found myself invested in the characters and the relationships far more than I was expecting.
The bad: If care about details, there's a lot of bad. The accents and use of Cajun expressions are mostly atrocious. If you are going to do a lot of bad Cajun accents, don't draw attention to it by throwing in some rather obscure Cajun expressions and putting in huge distracting English subtitles. Whoever did the set dressing, everything is just too too clean and new. No dust, no mud, no fish guts. It all looks like a Macy's Cajun houseboat display. The giant old alligator is a maybe 6 ft, 3 year old, yet they show it repeatedly. If you don't have the budget to fake a big old alligator, don't constantly show a rather small one. Colin Clifton Jr. looks great shirtless, but he is always shirtless, like it is a sitcom gag. Nice to see him in some pre-West World work. Unfortunately, somehow, Johnathon Schaech is never shirtless. Ditto Jeremy Davidson.
The worse: This movie is all set up to be an interesting erotic thriller/mystery, but there is no eros, and, no thrills, and almost no mystery. There is a huge Checkov's gun problem in that the missing Momma is constantly addressed, but never resolved. All the elements are there for some gut wrenching emotions or life-changing revelations...but we get NOTHING. It's sad and kinda shocking, because the story takes us 90% towards interesting interesting and impactful and just totally drops the ball.
The bad: If care about details, there's a lot of bad. The accents and use of Cajun expressions are mostly atrocious. If you are going to do a lot of bad Cajun accents, don't draw attention to it by throwing in some rather obscure Cajun expressions and putting in huge distracting English subtitles. Whoever did the set dressing, everything is just too too clean and new. No dust, no mud, no fish guts. It all looks like a Macy's Cajun houseboat display. The giant old alligator is a maybe 6 ft, 3 year old, yet they show it repeatedly. If you don't have the budget to fake a big old alligator, don't constantly show a rather small one. Colin Clifton Jr. looks great shirtless, but he is always shirtless, like it is a sitcom gag. Nice to see him in some pre-West World work. Unfortunately, somehow, Johnathon Schaech is never shirtless. Ditto Jeremy Davidson.
The worse: This movie is all set up to be an interesting erotic thriller/mystery, but there is no eros, and, no thrills, and almost no mystery. There is a huge Checkov's gun problem in that the missing Momma is constantly addressed, but never resolved. All the elements are there for some gut wrenching emotions or life-changing revelations...but we get NOTHING. It's sad and kinda shocking, because the story takes us 90% towards interesting interesting and impactful and just totally drops the ball.