Horror Movie Review: SnakeHead Swamp (2014)

You should know what you’re getting with a SyFy horror movie by now, a tongue in cheek, poorly acted, monster movie with shoddy effects.

Snakehead Swamp ticks all those boxes but somehow manages to take it all down a notch something that really shouldn’t have been possible if you’ve seen many other SyFy horror movies.

A whole bunch of mutant snakehead fish escape in the swamps around a small Louisiana town. Throw in something about an ancient curse & a bunch of teenagers partying on a boat out in the swamp & this should have been a recipe for a fun horror flick.

Instead it’s filled with bad acting, laughable dialogue & horrific CGI. I don’t understand why, considering how awful these mutated fish look, so much screen time would be given to them. As soon as they appear it’s impossible to take this film even slightly seriously.

Sure it’s a low budget offering so you could argue that you really shouldn’t complain about bad CGI but why not keep them better hidden? There is bad CGI and then there is Snakehead Swamp’s mutated fish.

The story is paper-thin & characters have little development, not enough to make you care what happens to anyone. The curse storyline is wasted as it teeters off into nothing & it’s never explained just how it ties into the mutated fish.

Attempts at humour fall flat mainly because of the poor acting but it does occasionally raise a smile because of the absurdity of the whole situation. The film has flashes of gore that occur mainly off screen but it’s inconsistent with how the fish behave. Early on so much as coming into contact with them will see limbs lost & blood spraying all over the place. Later though, a character will have one of her legs in one of the mutant’s mouths & manage to escape with next to no damage.

It’s a mess of a movie that really isn’t as much fun as it thinks it is.