one-nine-eighty A bit of a stinker, unfortunately I agree with the majority of the low ratings for this film. It's supposed to be your modern day slasher/horror film with pretty young people and mean bad guys who are stalking them at every turn. The theory is that watermen - or fishermen really - are taking groups of tourists for a bit of an adventure, unbeknown the tourists it's all a big trap to get them and make bait out of them to attract the big fish. A series of events occur culminating in the tourists being trapped on an island only to fight for their lives from the seamlessly indestructible fisherman. I won't lie, I was drawn into watching this being a fan of Jason Mewes in other roles/films. Unfortunately the Jason Mewes in other films is exactly what appears in this films, it's practically like 'Jay and Silent Bob' had a disagreement and an angry 'Jay' has decided to work to go on a holiday to a horror film - that's how much acting variation you will see, none. The rest of the cast are equally hammy and woody in parts which made the film drag along slowly. Worse than the acting was the stupid story which was riddled with plot holes and mistakes. It's obviously filmed on a low budget but it takes itself too seriously and tries to be "The Hills have Eyes" or "Texas Chainsaw massacre" on water - at this it fails dramatically. Because the film takes itself too seriously despite a bad story there isn't even ironic amusement in this. I'm afraid this is one of those films which I have watched once and will try to avoid henceforth, it's a "I'm glad I watched it so you don't have to" kind of film. Because I'm feeling generous I'll award a 3 star, if I had been writing this review straight after watching the film I may have been angry and only awarded a 2 so Matt L. Lockhart (director), you got off lucky today.

Paul Andrews The Watermen starts as a group of friends set sail for the open Ocean to do some fishing & relax, however their boat develops mechanical issues & they become stranded drifting in the water. Suddenly help is at hand, a huge fishing trawler appears & the friends think they are saved. The men on the trawler pass fresh clean water to them & they drink it, minutes later they are all unconscious on the deck of their boat. The friends wake up in a wooden shack full of tables & tanks, it quickly turns out that the fishermen are sadistic killers who murder & then cut up their victims & turn them into fish bait. With several of the teens sliced into fish food the remaining survivors must try to escape or end up the same way...Written, produced & directed by Matt L. Lockhart who also has a small cameo in the film as the bait shop customer this is typical teen slasher material with a somewhat sadistic & nasty streak that is absent from a lot of recent low budget slasher films, don't take that as any sort of recommendation but there it is. The script follows a tried & tested formula, don't expect to see anything original in The Watermen as you have your typical collection of faceless teen victims (I can't even remember any of their names) stranded in some isolated location being killed by the usual sadistic killers who seem to enjoy rape, torture & slicing people up with a variety of razor sharp knives. There are a couple of unpleasant rape scenes that aren't too graphic but add a certain sadism along with all the scenes of these kids being cut up, skinned & gutted which give The Watermen a slightly mare sadistic & nasty streak than a lot of recent low budget slasher films that I have seen. There's no great explanation behind anything, the teens just want to have sex & fish on a boat while all the killers are interested in is making more fish bait (surely there are easier & lass risky ways?) & if this stuff is so s*it hot then why sell it to these loser kids in the first place? You would have though they would have wanted to save the human flesh for themselves, I mean they seem to kill a lot of people but surely they can't have an endless supply of the stuff?One problem with The Watermen is that there's too much footage of the character's running or splashing around in the water, people say stay here & I'll be back or make some silly suggestion that leads them right back to the killers & it's a bit lazy really. There's not much tension or suspense & why does the main killer have to mumble, I couldn't understand what he saying most of the time. There's a bit of nudity & a couple of brief rape scenes. There's some decent gore but it's mostly the same sort of thing with bodies being sliced & cut up, there's lots of blood & body parts as well. There's an amusing web-cam gag as well in which a guy gets his cock and balls out & show's them to his mates, yes it's childish but somewhat funny with it.With a supposed budget of about $1,150,000 this was apparently filmed in Newport News in Virginia, the production values are decent enough & it's reasonably well made & doesn't look as low budget as a lot of recent horror films do.The Watermen is an alright slasher with a slightly higher gore & nastiness level than I expected which helps, nothing brilliant & I can hardly remember anything about it but it passed 90 odd minutes harmlessly enough. I've seen better but I have also seen worse.

skorkk Wow, this movie is really as bad as everyone says. In the laziest plot in the world a group of attractive young adults go on a boating trip and when the boat breaks down they get kidnapped by a bunch of redneck fishermen/pirates/whatever. Sound predictable so far? Well the cliché's don't stop there so you can probably guess what happens in the rest of the movie without me having to go into too much explanation.The most horrific thing about this movie though is the blatant misogynistic tone throughout. I know the horror genre has always had a reputation for being slightly sexist, but this movie is just unbelievable. The male protagonists spend most of their time wandering around in circles before jumping in to save the day. All the while the females get attacked, tortured, molested and raped by the bad guys. Even when guarded with weapons the three women can't take on one man because all he has to do is walk towards them and they'll simply stand there and cry. This is despite the fact that they obviously have extremely high pain thresh holds because straight after getting raped they can just run around like normal.As for the bad guys themselves, well you'll find scarier characters in an episode of Eastenders. We're supposed to believe that six young athletic adults would struggle to get away from these idiots when a herd of donkeys should be able to outsmart them with ease. The basically just look like a bunch of homeless guys in raincoats. Don't ask me where they're supposed to be from because I'm none the wiser after watching it. In some scenes they just use the stereotypical American hillbilly accent, in others they use god knows what accent and speak in broken English. Half the movie they don't seem to speak in English at all! The acting, although not great, is nowhere near as bad as you'd expect. I've seen a LOT worse in other horror movies that probably had a bigger budget than this. I was surprised to see Jason Mewes star in this. I know he's not exactly A list these days but didn't think his career had gotten this bad just yet. After seeing the whole movie though and realising what a small part he plays, it's obvious he must have been paid a significant amount to do very little and get a top billing.Any good points? Well one of the actors has a smokin body and spends most of the third act with his shirt off. Apart from that....NOPE!

tdeladeriere This thriller starts in medias res, as a girl is being hunter at night in the swamp by a couple of hulking goons in fishermen's attire. After she meets her fate, we are introduced to six fine pieces of trash Americana leisuring in a posh villa. The 3 girls look right out of a bikini-happy euro-dance music video and the 3 guys, who use "Dude" at the beginning of each sentence, probably hit the gym 3 times a day. This fine group of clueless bourgeoisie get ready for a fishing trip (duh ?) in the middle of the sea.Before they embark, they stop by some kind of store run by an old fisherman that sells them "special" bait. Turns out the bait if made of human flesh, as the 6 airheads will soon discover.To its credit, this movie is slickly directed and photographed. Nocturnal swamp scenes could have easily turned into one giant black screen with dialogue in any other B-movie, but the director of photography knew what he was doing. It all looks quite professional.It's all the more sorry that there's not a single novel idea in the movie that could save it from instant disposability. Clichés abound, and quite cringe-worthy ones, I'll tell you : one of the girls, who didn't know what she was getting into, is actually the lead's former girlfriend, of course they fall in love again, everybody gets drunk before the drama begins, the first ones to die are the hottest and dumbest but they still show their tits, the villains talk some kind of Russian, the main goon comes back from the dead so often that you feel like you're watching another "Friday the 13th" installment, the male lead drops his shirt for completely out-of-place action sequences, there's a baton-of-fire fight that looks more like capoeira than a real fight for survival, and I forget some.This movie's been done before a hundred times (and the director must have seen all hundred) spanning the whole gamut of Hollywood genres : survival, action, romance, stoner comedy... Still, it's done professionally, and past the 1st 40 minutes, it moves fast enough that an undemanding audience will have its fun, as did I. And it doesn't hurt that the whole cast (male & female) is goddamn gorgeous and not shy of dropping their tops.