Black Water (2007) – WTF Really Happened to This Horror Movie?

The episode of WTF Really Happened to This Horror Movie covering Black Water was Written and Narrated by Andrew Hatfield, Edited by Mike Conway, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

Animal attack movies have been quite a lucrative genre for a very long time. Obviously, Jaws is the beginning and the end of the conversation but there’s so much more. Grizzlies, whales, dogs, you name it have been the focal point of horror films and will continue to be there with things like Cocaine Bear, The Meg 2, and others infiltrating theaters on a yearly basis. Most of these, of course, are fictional accounts like Stephen King giving us Cujo or any number of other on-screen animals gone wild. There are, however, the rare account that is based on a true story and today is one of those cases. Alligators and crocodiles have been around forever and while we have been blessed with awesome fictional horror like Crawl, Alligator, and Killer Crocodile but Black Water is actually based on the harrowing and tragic events that took place in northern Australia in December of 2003. While the movie was a modest indie hit, how faithful was it in telling the true story?

Make sure the tree you are hiding in is high enough as we find out what REALLY happened to Black Water.

Black Water is the 2007 Australian horror movie based on the real-life account of Ashley Mcgough, Brett Mann, and Shaun Blowers and their encounter with a crocodile. The directors were inspired by the true events having also been born in Australia and filmed the movie in Sydney and Darwin. Darwin was used to film real life salt water crocodiles while Sydney was used instead of the huge amount of land covered by the mangroves, where the terrifying true events took place. The movie was released in 2007 on the festival circuit and would eventually garner award nominations through several outlets in and outside of its native land. While the budget is hard to come by, it was a profitable movie making almost 1.3 million at the box office followed by home video sales that would bolster that seemingly low number. It even received a rather pointless sequel called Black Water: Abyss that was released to little or no fanfare in 2020.

The directors and writers of the movie are Australian born David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki. To date it is the only thing written or directed by David Nerlich, though he has done special effects for a handful of other movies. Andrew Traucki has done slightly more for himself with directing the previously mentioned sequel as well as a segment from the first ABCs of Death. He also wrote and directed a shark thriller called The Reef and its sequel and in between wrote and directed The Jungle. In front of the camera only has 5 names attached to it with Diana Glenn as Grace, Maeve Dermody as Lee, and Andy Rodereda as Andy. While these are the main characters that take up most of the screen time, Black Water also has Fiona Press as Pat and Ben Oxenbould as Jim.

Diana Glenn has mostly stuck to TV with her biggest role being a 61-episode run on Australian soap opera Neighbors. Maeve Dermody has also been mostly a TV star with turns on Serangoon Road and The Frankenstein Chronicles while also having a few projects in production. Andy Rodereda may be the most well known of the bunch with roles in Infini and both the short and feature film versions of Cargo with the latter starring Martin Freeman as a father trying to get his child to safety in a zombie-stricken world. While none of them are huge Hollywood faces, they all do a nice job here projecting the fear of being eaten by a crocodile and give it a realness that helps elevate the movie to more than it should be.

The movie starts with the tried-and-true scroll about the events being based on a true story while also giving us the warning about saltwater crocodile and human populations growing. We then get introduced to our 3 main characters in Adam, his wife Grace, and Grace’s younger sister Lee. They are leaving mom’s house and decide on the way home that they should go visit an off the beaten path crocodile area. We get some good crocodile foreshadowing before the three end up in a bar where Grace isn’t drinking. She thinks she may be pregnant and confirms it later on in the evening. The trio gets to the boat tour place, but the main guide is gone and so the more inexperienced guide offers to take them out. They agree but no one will know they are gone, and it is a decision that will come back to haunt them.

(Factometer 25%) Well the real events did involve 3 people, but they were all men and much younger in real life. Brett Mann was 22 at the time of the incident while Ashley and Shaun were both 19. The three friends left their house before noon to get to one of their favorite places and raced around on their Quad bikes. This is something they had done numerous times and they even drove past many of the swampy areas they were accustomed to. Interestingly enough, Shaun and his family had been going there for nearly 15 years, so he was very familiar with the surrounding areas and, looking back, he had never once seen a crocodile near the grounds. The true-life events were already harrowing enough but of course the movie added the family angle and pregnancy to give more stakes to the story. They also added the tour guide and character rather than just having the main characters go off exploring.

The movie shows our little group on the boat with the tour guide showing them the waters and the local area. They take lots of fun pictures with each other and eventually begin to fish with the idea of catch and release. They hear a noise and feel a bump on the boat, but it merely turns out to be a big can in the water. With not much action, the guide suggests they move further down the water, and he assures them that it’s quite safe. They end up in an area where the tide is running low but there is still plenty to fish. There is a big bump but this time its from an actual crocodile that knocks the boat over, forcing the 4 occupants to flee for shelter. Lee struggles to get on the overturned boat while Adam and Grace make up a tree while noticing that there is still a croc in the waters hunting. The guide was eaten which gave them the time to get to temporary safety.

(Factometer 25%) The three boys finished on their bikes and quads and decided to clean their clothes and gear in the water. While the water level was higher than normal, it was expected this time of year. They began playing around and throwing mud on each other when Shaun noticed Brett losing his footing and began to be washed further down river. The other two men went after him and ended up nearly a kilometer away from where they started and any dry land. The movie depicts a boat fishing excursion and tempting fate with an inexperienced guide while the 3 adventurous men in real life had a simple twist of fate when one of them list footing and the other two had to go after him.

With some temporary reprieve and safety of a tree and boat, the three family members try and figure out how to get together since they are separated and how to get the boat back up as it will be needed for an escape. They try and throw the rope from the boat first to pull it to the tree. The throw misses and Adam has to get it himself. It’s stuck on a log, so they tell lee to swim over. She barely makes it and hurts her foot, but they all end up in the tree together. They go back and forth on staying for a rescue or getting the boat and attempting to head back upriver to where their car is. They decide the first plan is for Grace to cross the trees, but she finds pieces of the guide’s corpse and is scared back to the group where they decide to wait for a while.

(Factometer 50%) When the three men finally got together and laughed off what had happened, Ashley yelled out that there was a crocodile and they scattered and headed for the trees. Just like in the movie, the trees are their only real safety and just like in the movie they lost one of their own. In the movie, they lose track of the guide only to see his body and shortly after it gets taken away by the crocodile whereas in real life, Ashley and Shaun looked for Brett only to find that the crocodile went for him first and he was spotted in its jaws. No noises or cries, he was already dead. They stayed in the tree together as night fell and were fighting for their lives as the cold and wind ravaged the tree and their bodies while the 4-meter-long crocodile stalked the base of the tree. They held on to each other and yelled “moving” when they needed to adjust so that the other knew it was voluntary.

Adam gets impatient and goes for the boat. While he is able to get it turned over, he is killed by the crocodile in front of his wife and her sister. The girls wait out a minor storm overnight and the boat is closer than it was the previous day. Hunger and exhaustion are starting to set in and while a boat actually passes by it can’t hear them because of the motor and isn’t close enough. With Lee’s injury getting worse, the pair decide that the boat is their only option, and the trees will help them avoid the water as long as possible. The croc is waiting for them though and when they make it to the boat it attacks and pulls grace under. She survives the attack but has a massive wound and emotional trauma to contend with. Lee makes it to the boat but is thrown into the water and ends up on a small bank of land. Lee the guide’s body is there too, and she gets the gun from his corpse. After some tense starts and stops and the gun jamming, she eventually shoots and kills the stalking monster but when she makes it back to her sister, she has succumbed to her injuries. She puts her body in the boat and heads back to her car, shattered both emotionally and physically.

(Factometer 25%) Unlike the movie, the real-life boys had friends that knew where they were and when they didn’t show up, they went after them. Their car was found and a team including the police found out where the boys were due to following equipment pieces and faint shouts. The boys warned them of the crocodile, and they knew that swimming to shore was not a viable option. A puma helicopter was brought in and a combination of them moving away from the trees and the chopper allowed BOTH boys to be rescued instead of any additional fatalities like in the film. A crocodile was shot by wildlife officers, but Brett’s body was never recovered unfortunately. 4 years later, the survivors had two separate movies made that were inspired by their tale with today’s movie and the Rhada Mitchell led Rogue.

Rogue is only barely inspired by the tale of the 3 boys that nearly never came back and while Black Water is closer with elements like the 3 people, hiding in the trees, and the raised water levels, it’s not very close. That’s probably for the best as it would be hard for the two surviving boys to watch on screen anything that would have been closer to reality. The movie is a great example of a lower budget independent creature feature that I highly recommend checking out. It exists on physical media and is frequently streaming on Tubi. While the based on a true story label falls a little thin here, it’s a great and intense tale that was based on a similar scary event.

A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Really Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To check out the other shows we have on the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel, head over to the channel – and subscribe while you’re there!