Crawl (2019) Review

Crawl (2019) Review

 

Haley is a competitive swimmer, and her father has been one of her biggest supporters, calling her an “apex predator.” The American alligator is one of the largest predatory reptiles in North America, and these two apex predators meet face-to-face when a hurricane hits Florida and traps Haley and her father in the crawlspace of their former family home with not just one but several of the hungry gators.

I initially thought the title Crawl referred to the fact that alligators use crawling as a means of locomotion, and it probably does to a degree, but it also refers to the primary setting of the film. It’s a creepy, claustrophobic setting, and the production design is very well done. This is a very good-looking B-movie, which should come as no surprise, given it’s from director Alexandre Aja, an underrated talent in the horror genre most well-known for the 2010 remake of Piranha. Crawl is a far more serious and grounded film, but is still ultimately just another simple-concept survival story we’ve seen many times before, with a few different elements. The alligators are not the sole antagonistic force, which I appreciated. These characters are as much at the mercy of the storm as the reptiles, and just when you think they’re safe from one, the other poses a new threat.

Main character Haley is played by Kaya Scodelario, and as far as I know, this is her first leading role. I thought she did a serviceable job, but she has a constant sour expression the entire film, even before things get bad, and makes a lot of strained grunting noises, but as a character we’re supposed to sympathize with, she just manages to pull it off. The father, played by Barry Pepper, is better, and he really goes through some rough stuff. There are a few other peripheral characters, but father and daughter are the only people on screen for most of it, and there are enough interesting situations for them to escape from that it never gets boring or repetitive.

The special effects for the alligators are very well done. I had trouble telling the difference between the practical effects and the cgi effects, which is always a good problem to have in these kinds of movies, and the cgi might be the best for an alligator or crocodile that I’ve ever seen in one of these killer animal flicks. Their behaviour rides the line of being pretty realistic and way too exaggerated, but the first time one of them is shown it’s a pretty surprising and nail-biting reveal. Even though it has an R-rating, the gore isn’t that excessive, and neither is the swearing, which was actually refreshing. Not every creature feature needs copious amounts of cussing and extreme violence to be thrilling.

I think the main problem with Crawl is its lack of commitment to realism or extremism, and the abundance of cliché elements. It teeters on being too restrained for its own good, lacking exaggerated characters or a big explosive finale like Jaws or Lake Placid, but it also strays too far from realism in many scenes, mostly toward the end, where if you stop and think for a minute, you realize things like “alligators would never do something like that” or “that would have definitely killed someone in real life” or “why did they make that dumb decision? Why didn’t they just do this in the first place?” For a viewer who wants a grounded survival tale, this isn’t it, but for someone who just wants a pared-down, straight-forward thriller, and/or a killer animal premise with alligators, it delivers enough of the goods to make it worthwhile.

Crawl is a pretty entertaining survival thriller. It has a tight focus on the characters, looks slick, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It might not thrill long-time horror fans as much as more casual viewers, and may also frustrate others with some of the questionable choices made, but in a day and age where most animal attack movies are pieces of crap dumped on the SyFy channel, Crawl rises above those as one of the most-well-produced films of its kind in a while.