Crawl review

CRAWL:

ALLIGATOR CREATURE FEATURE IS MINDLESS FUN! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

If the storm doesn’t get you, they will in Crawl

            The alligators have resurfaced and are about to give sharks a run for their money in Crawl, the latest horror creature feature produced by Sam Raimi (Evil Dead franchise, Darkman, Spider-Man trilogy) and directed by Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes( 2006), Piranha 3D). Going into this movie I didn’t have many expectations, it just looks like a dumb, fun creature feature and an alligator version of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws or Deep Blue Sea by the trailer. 

            Crawl did not disappoint, it is a very entertaining scary flick that doesn’t take itself too seriously but isn’t cheesy to the point where it looks like another shitty shark movie from The Asylum with alligators, it balances fun and terror very well. The plot is pretty basic, girl gets trapped in a flooded basement and alligators are out to get her, simple stuff, but with the inclusion of an intense hurricane happening outside, it’s actually a pretty damn terrifying concept. 

            The film is set in Florida during a massive hurricane and follows a girl named Haley (Kaya Scodelario-Skins, The Maze Runner trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) who is searching for her father who has presumably gone missing when the hurricane struck. Haley goes to her family home but gets trapped inside the basement which is now flooded where she finds her dad, Dave (Barry Pepper-Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, The Kennedys), but that is the least of Haley’s worries as the basement is also infested with alligators and guess what? They are very hungry.

            With time running out, the storm getting stronger, and alligators around every corner, Haley and Dave must figure out a way to escape and get to safety before they drown or become a tasty alligator dinner. 

            Overall, Crawl is a very enjoyable creature feature that doesn’t really do anything new or groundbreaking with the genre but just adds another dumb, fun film in that category and for once it ISN’T a shark movie. In an era where shark movies dominate the cheesy B-movie market with a never-ending slew of Sharknado movies, it’s nice to see alligators getting some spotlight in the horror genre because I think the last legitimately good alligator horror movie was 1999’s Lake Placid.

            The idea of being trapped in a room that’s flooding and infested with alligators out to eat you alive with an intense hurricane happening outside is actually pretty terrifying. It isn’t a movie that will keep me up at night, but could you imagine being stuck in a place you can’t get out of with a killer predator out to get you and even crazier stuff happening outside? It’s a scary idea and a realistic situation unlike something like Child’s Play or Annabelle where it’s all fictional. 

            One thing I have to give Crawl some serious credit for is that despite falling into a few horror movie tropes and clichés like randomly tripping while running away or dropping a phone, you care about Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper’s characters and want to see them survive and make it out. It’s very common in scary movies for the protagonists to be extremely one-dimensional and obnoxious tools basically just there to inevitably die, not the case in Crawl as it gives both Scodelario and Pepper’s characters depth and interesting backstories, Haley is an aspiring swimmer at the University of Florida in a desperate need for courage and Dave has gone through situations with his ex-wife and Haley’s mother and has presumably put the family home up for sale with no success, both of them help each other out to escape and you feel a sigh a relief whenever they successfully fend off the alligators. 

            Crawl is reminiscent of the 2016 film, The Shallows in certain areas, a woman stuck in deep water trying to escape while fighting off a bloodthirsty predator out to devour her. But unlike that movie where it was just Blake Lively battling a shark, there is more than one person involved in the situation here and replace the shark with a whole bunch of alligators, it isn’t a rip-off, but it can be a little noticeable if you’ve seen both movies. 

            If you’re a fan of creature features and horror films with menacing beasts and blood, then Crawl is the movie for you. It has edge-of-your-seat thrills with a tongue-in-cheek sense of fun tucked inside thus resulting in a very entertaining summer scary flick.