While on vacation Grace, her husband Adam and Grace's younger sister Lee decide to visit at a crocodile show. The next day they head to "Back Water Barry's" fishing tour to take a boat ride back into the mangrove swamp to try some fishing. Once they arrive at the docks, their tour guide, Jim, arms himself with a revolver and they set off. After failing to catch any fish on the usual route, Jim suggests going deeper into the swamps. While in a small clearing, Lee spots something through her camera and alerts Grace, but later finds nothing. Suddenly, the boat capsizes; dumping the occupants into the water. Adam realizes a crocodile attacked them and helps Grace into a nearby tree. He searches the water for Lee, who got tangled up in ropes underneath the boat. Grace sees the beast nearby and convinces Adam to come back. Lee frees herself, but the beast swims after her. She manages to climb atop the boat, but the beast thrashes the boat in an attempt to throw her off. Adam and Grace distract it, and it swims away. Realizing they can use the boat's ropes to pull Lee to safety, they attempt to execute this plan, only for the boat to get stuck. A hesitant Lee's forced to swim across and makes it despite panicking halfway across. The girls suggest waiting for help, but Adam claims no one saw them leave, so Grace tries climbing the trees back to the mainland. However, she's forced to swim back. An impatient Adam goes for the boat. He successfully overturns it, but the beast kills him. The girls make numerous attempts to continue his plan, only to be thwarted at every turn. The next day, they decide the boat's a lost cause and attempt to use the trees to get out of the clearing again. The beast attacks them, forcing them back to their original tree, though Grace suffers a nasty bite to her thigh in the process. Because of heavy bleeding, her condition worsens over time. Lee tries once again to reach the boat, but gets pulled underwater and knocked unconscious. She later finds herself on a very small island alongside Jim's body. She patches herself up, takes his revolver, and attempts to kill the beast; only the gun fails to work due to being jammed with mud. She tries to lure the beast in using Jim's detached arm as bait and holding the pistol ready to fire at it when it comes for the snack but it refused to show itself. She flees, with the beast close behind. It launches a sneak attack when she stops, but Lee manages to get the gun working and kill it. The threat averted, she makes her way back to Grace, who has died from her injuries. Lee mourns her sister as she places her on the boat and paddles out of the mangrove.
The location representing the vast mangroves system in northern Australia was actually in the directors' home town of Sydney, 25 minutes from the Central business district In a small suburb called Oatley. They also spent a week in Darwin shooting footage of real saltwater crocodiles that were transplanted into the location along with the actors, with the directing team doing their own CG special effects to achieve this.
Black Water received positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 79% based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 5.93/10. Critics praised the lack of CGI commonly used in this type of film, as well as the tense plotting and suspense built from it. Neil Smith of Total Film Magazine also praised the ending stating it was "a conclusion that refreshingly refutes the genre rulebook."
Awards
Box office
Black Water performed well financially and grossed $1,271,556 worldwide.
Sequel
A sequel titled, was released on July 4th, 2020 in the UK, and is scheduled to release in Australia on July 30th, 2020.
