HOOP-TOBER 8
A Tobe Hooper Film

Eaten Alive has all of the pieces to make a tasty meal of delicious, sadistic, backwoods horror. But instead, everything feels largely left on the counter and not in the soup. Unlike Kevin’s Famous Chili from The Office, everyone didn’t “get to know each other in the pot.”

You have your redneck murderer. 
You have your killer crocodile.
You have a really amazing bayou location.
You have Marilyn Burns.
You have little Angi. 
You have the “missing sister” Hitchcock/Psycho subplot.

But somehow all of these pieces feel somewhat disjointed. I’m not sure Judd has a need for a crocodile other than something to eat his victims. But in the bayou, he could dispose of them to any gator at all. The crocodile doesn’t need Judd to be scary, and could have held up a story all on its own. 

I wish that all of the great things going on here could have blended together a little more and felt more overall cohesive. Hooper knows that people are afraid of the “scary redneck” and he uses that to great effect here and in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but on the whole, Eaten Alive falls kinda flat.