"I want to see the crocodile place"

"Sounds good to me."

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now, facing the prospect of satisfying the appetite of a grizzled old croc, Grace (Glenn), her boyfriend Adam (Oxenbould) and little sister Lee (Dermody) can probably think of better things to do.

After a Christmas trip home, the trio made the fatal mistake of stopping off for a fishing trip in a mangrove swamp in Australia's Northern Territories.

However, the sluggish waters conceal a lightning-fast predator...and their flimsy aluminium boat is suddenly upended and they're all pitched into the drink.

The first victim is their good ol' boatman while pregnant Grace, myopic Adam and gammy-legged Lee manage to scramble up a tree and take stock of the croc.

Working from a budget that would just about cover the laundry bill on Anaconda, directors David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki have fashioned a nifty thriller.

Keeping CGI down to a minimum (mostly created on their own laptops), the film-makers carefully construct an atmosphere of dread under the dripping canopy of the gloomy forest.

(One live reptile swallowed a camera during filming which was retrieved and the resulting footage used in the final cut.)

The deadly Saltwater croc is rarely glimpsed - sometimes just a trail of bubbles breaking the surface or an ominous slipstream - but it's subtly hinted that putting your hand in the water is akin to sticking it into a waste disposal unit.

Lean and mean, this basically does for crocodiles what Open Water did for sharks. Snap it up.

Tim Evans