Swamp Freak (2017) User Reviews

It is time brother.

[nogodnomasters · 2/10 · 5 July 2017]

This is the story of the Canadian swamp creature which has its ancient origins in 1967 or maybe 1992. Some college kids go to the area to investigate the disappearance of their professor only to encounter the creature.

I thought I had seen this film before. David DeCoteau likes to film his productions in the same area, use the same stock footage, use the same bad camera shots and house in Cowichan Valley, BC. "Asian Ghost Story" is the same movie except it has a ghost instead of a swamp creature. The creature breathes real heavy whenever he is sneaking up on someone, perhaps being a deformed human and spending a lot of time underwater has something to do with it, except when he is not stalking, there is no heavy breathing. When guys see the creature they take off running...we are talking 4 minute mile speed. The swamp creature moves at the speed of someone using a walker. Yet, the creature appears down the road in front of them. The bulk of the film is filler material of scenery and people walking in the woods. There is a lot of close ups of shoes and the creature's feet. It has the same walking scenes, dock scenes, and house scenes used in other films. It appears if you have seen one David DeCoteau film you have seen them all and that is one too many.

Clearly Donald Trump had this film in mind when he said we need to renegotiate NAFTA and build a wall. :) Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity. Not much dialogue.

Some things should just remain out in the swamp...

[paul_haakonsen · 2/10 · 22 May 2017]

When I sat down to watch "Swamp Freak", it was without any knowledge about what it was about, who starred in it, or what to expect from it. I was interested in it solely because it was a horror movie and because of the title.

The title should have triggered a bell somewhere, because this was a blatant rip-off of the "Swamp Thing" creature, although to a less successful extend.

The movie starts out by spending way too long on following a guy walking around in the woodland area in the beginning of the movie. And that basically set the premise for the rest of the movie.

A serious amount of time is wasted on showing scenic views of the nature. While it is beautiful, it is not essential for the movie. This resulted in an incredibly slow paced and very uneventful movie, with no real solid storyline.

I will say that "Swamp Freak" does have some good atmospheric music, although a bit too loud in comparison to the rest of the sounds in the movie.

The creature is painstakingly obvious just a guy wearing a suit plastered with vegetation. And the sound that it made was just too much, it sounded like it should be the sound of some large predatory beast, not a two legged man-thing from the swamp.

All in all, "Swamp Freak" was not an impressive or memorable movie in any sense, and I managed to sit through a whopping 40 minutes of it before I gave up out of sheer and complete boredom.

"Swamp Freak" is not a movie that I have any intention of returning to finish, because there was just nothing worthwhile to hold my interest here. My rating of "Swamp Freak" is a mere 3 out of 10 stars.

Nothing happens

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 19 January 2019]

SWAMP FREAK is a cheap, mindless, criminally boring so-called 'horror' movie from Canada, directed by none other than David DeCoteau. This is atypical for him because there are no homoerotic moments nor scenes of the lead characters wandering around in their underwear. Instead, you get youthful folk wandering around a picturesque rural locale looking for a monster that never shows up. There are a few scripted words and long, 5-minute segments of travelogue-style footage. It's one of those films where nothing happens, in other words.

I am a fan of horror but what was that???

[Waheed-Anwar · 26 May 2017]

1st of all I fell asleep during my 1st attempt to watch this film... It looked like a bunch of high school students stretched an idea over their childhood film "swampthing" - acting, story-line, direction, and mixing... everything is so basic... It just seems they shot an extra film during their trip as a bonus.

A fresh take on pure boredom...

[Barebower · 1/10 · 20 January 2022]

At 75 minutes in length this 'movie' was exactly 73 minutes too long... They should've just rolled the closing credits at the start and left it at that. The credits were far more entertaining than the train-wreck of a movie that preceded them.

A dog with a GoPro strapped to its head could make a better movie than this...

Swamp Stupid

[tmccull52 · 1/10 · 3 December 2019]

There is absolutely nothing worthwhile or interesting about this movie. The direction is terrible, and the acting is even worse. When the film reveals the "mysterious monster", you can very clearly see that the actor inside of the costume is wearing a hat and boots.

The premise of the movie is that a popular teacher has somehow gone missing, and several students set out on a quest to find their beloved educator. The police won't help because the teacher hasn't been missing for more than 72 hours.

Student # 1 is a young woman who arrives at their missing teacher's cottage ahead of the others. She is trying to coordinate the search.

Searcher/Student #1 shows up to help, and while searching for the missing teacher, he espies the monster. Frightened by what he sees, he goes tear-assing down the road at full speed. Somehow, the lumbering monster, who walks very slowly through the brush, catches up to him, and kills him with a swipe of it's paw or hand.

Searcher/Student # 2 shows up, and is killed in the exact same setting, and series of events as Searcher/Student #1. The director shot and re-shot the exact same scenes with different actors.

Searcher/ Student # 3. Ditto. However, Searcher/Student # 3 executes one of the worst falls with injury in the history of cinema. He literally just flops onto the ground and starts screaming, "It's gotta be my knee!"

Searcher/Student # 4. Ditto, minus the lousy fall and injury. Each kill made by the monster is exactly the same. Victim runs at top speed. Monster lumbers slowly along. Victim turns around. Monster is suddenly there. Victim screams. Monster swipes at victim.with his right hand. Monster wades into the swamp and slowly slips beneath the surface.

Then we have the "villain" who summons the monster... the monster's brother. He looks like he just got off of work at Starbucks. He and the monster are the protectors of the swamp, you see, and it is their duty to protect the swamp... which they feel is theirs... from trespassers and developers. Their is no explanation offered as to why one of the brothers looks like a Starbucks barrista, and why the other looks like a guy covered in seaweed (wearing a hat and boots). There is also the unexplained "portal" between the attic of the cottage, and the swamp. Starbucks-Boy goes up into the attic, and in the very next scene, he's somehow aalllllll the way over by the swamp, with no explanation whatsoever as to how he got there.

Then, there's the unexpected plot twist at the very end of the movie. Starbucks-Boy and the monster in the hat and the boots are one in the same!

This movie is beyond stupid, and it is one of the most poorly executed movies that I've ever had the misfortune to see. Spare yourself the mind-numbing agony of sitting through this utter piece of trash.

"This can't be happening".......

[ant36au · 1/10 · 29 January 2020]

A quote from this movie you will find yourself saying repeatedly if you manage to make it through this absolute stinker,honestly,I have seen better movies made by 4th grade students than this complete and utter borefest and certainly better acting from them than these alleged actors,it's like someone took a project that absolutely nobody was interested in doing but were forced into doing then whacked it on a disc and decided to see how much they could scam an unsuspecting public out of ,fortunately I didn't pay to see it as absolutely everything about it is horrendous,if I could give it a zero that is exactly what it would get.

Just bad!!

[tjgraham-17762 · 2/10 · 17 September 2019]

This was a terribly executed horror film. It was suppose to be about a bunch of college kids gathering together to find their missing professor. What you got instead was no one appearing on camera together at the same time but rather the director had each student wait to take their turn walking around by themselves for far too long until they each met their demise by the hand of the swamp creature. This is how they managed to stretch the movie out to just over an hour.

The Greatest

[yanksrulemetsdrool · 10/10 · 23 January 2020]

Comparable to the likes of Spielberg, the director of Swamp Freak utilizes grade A acting to forge a cinematic masterpiece. This is the singlehanded best movie I have ever seen. While some say it was bad to have the people on camera separately, I think it helps portray each ones acting ability. All in all this is the best movie I have ever seen!

Hauntingly Beautiful

[warehousereviews · 6/10 · 25 August 2020]

Another masterpiece from the Bret Hart of cinematography. David DeCoteau is the best there is, was, and ever will be, and classics such as Swamp Freak just cement his position at the top even more. The long lingering nature shots where breathtaking and chilling. The subtle humor he incorporates into his writing is brilliant. "I'M KEEPING THE STICK" and "AAAARGH MY KNEE" from the great Wallace were so eloquently spoken it was as if He actually was keeping that stick. The Swamp Freak was truly terrifying in the way it could manipulate time and space to lull its victims into thinking they could out run his lumbering walking pace only to appear behind them and absolutely savage them with a right hook that would make Mike Tyson himself cream his panties. Another must watch. Well done Dave.