The Pool

What can happen in a 90-minute film about someone stuck in a deep plunge pool with a crocodile? A surprising number of things. And it's immensely entertaining to watch the ingenuity with which writer-director Ping Lumpraploeng manages to keep the main character at the bottom of the pool and the viewer in constant suspense the entire time. It's astounding the creepy subtlety with which he can continually throw sticks at his hero's feet. The law of causality here gradually escalates to enormously absurd proportions. The hero is constantly offered ways to escape, but then something always goes wrong by accident and he is worse off than before. In this respect, The Pool is perhaps the most vicious film I've ever seen. Or rather the most malicious feature film, because the writers are only this cruel to the villains in cartoons like Road Runner. The Pool is a similarly wacky entertainment in which logic and probability have nothing to do. I confess I guiltily enjoyed it more than this year's crocodile horror The Crawl. (03/11/2019)

(Spoiler alert!) A few Gremlin-like tips to start with: (1) Don't swim in a pool without steps! / (2) Always have a waterproof phone! / (3) Don't wear unnecessary accessories like chains, etc.! / (4) But above all, never fall asleep in a pool that is being drained! The Pool, as the Thai cousin of last year's Crawl, to which it has been widely compared, has a decently raw atmosphere, but also a few stumbles in the script, and it could be really cut up in places. The crocodile looks artificial at times, but still gives off a real sense of dread. Even though the film gives away the plot right from the start, I was still tense right up to the end, which was perhaps even less real than the crocodile. But whatever! But not to be overly nitpicky, I must admit I was impressed by the unmistakable musical score. PS: I was quite surprised that the film got 96% on Rotten Tomatoes! (20/12/2020)

This summer’s Crawl by Alexandre Aja and Sam Raimi has better production values, but if I had to choose a fun crocodile survival film, I’d recommend a trip to Thailand. It’s a wonderfully mischievous distraction, where the main character, due to an unfortunate accident, falls into a six-meter deep pool and terrible things happen to him. Like a crocodile falling into that same pool! And that’s not the end of it, things keep on going to the shitter. After several artsy “horror”, unwatchable borefests, this is a truly refreshing film and I don’t hesitate to give it a weak four. (04/10/2019)

Unpretentious fun from Thailand. The main character finds himself in an unenviable situation. He gets stuck in a 6-meter deep pool and with all the bad luck, a crocodile also falls in. So this is an animal-survival film that is very suspenseful, entertaining and decently done. At times the things that happen to the main character felt almost parodic, because you really don't see that much bad luck and mishaps. 65%. (13/10/2019)