Crawl (Review)
Crawl is Just Another Tuesday in Florida.
I love killer animal movies. So, when I first saw the trailer for Crawl I knew it was a movie that would be right up my alley. The thing is though that good killer animal movies are few and far between these days. Sure, there are a lot of flicks about sharks out there, but more and more often they seem to involve the terrors of the deep getting sucked into tornados. Crawl though has a respectable team behind the camera, including splat pack member Alexandre Aja directing (who is more than familiar with killer animal movies after Piranha 3D) and Sam Rami producing (a man who knows a thing or two about creepy house movies). These two come together to give audiences a movie that has plenty of bite.
A lot of people might scoff at the concept of Crawl. A man and his daughter (played by Barry Pepper and Kaya Scodelario) find themselves trapped in a house after refusing to evacuate during a category 5 hurricane. To make matters worse, they find themselves trapped in the crawl space under their house by aggressive alligators that seem to have a taste for human flesh. Well, as a Floridian, I can assure you that all of these is pretty much accurate for what goes on in this crazy state. For one thing, we don’t do the whole “evacuation” thing. Instead, we have hurricane parties, which are exactly what they sound like. We also do have a bit of a gator problem, and I remember actually reading about a woman discovering one of the enormous reptiles in her kitchen just moments before seeing the first trailer for Crawl. So, as far as these killer animal movies go, Crawl is a movie I could actually see happening. Though probably not to the extremes that occur in the film.
Alexandre Aja is one of the more respected modern horror directors working today. He brought us such gut-wrenching films as High Tension, Horns, and The Hills Have Eyes, which is one of the better horror remakes of all time. Needless to say, he’s got a pretty firm grasp on the genre and brings his expertise to bear with Crawl. The film takes full advantage of the fact that alligators are pretty much living dinosaurs. They’ve been apex predators for millions of years and it’s not because they’re cute and cuddly. However, it’s not just the fact that the film features such terrifying antagonists. It places them in a cold, dark basement, where escape from them seems all but impossible. All the characters can do it hide and pray for salvation as each escape attempt ends in more setbacks and the storm outside slowly starts to flood the crawl space that they’re trapped in. While Aja makes sure the film has plenty of teeth and claws, it’s the sound that really gets to you after a while. Gators are much more vocal than people might think and Crawl is filled with low, guttural hisses that seem to echo off that walls are the humans try desperately not to get caught by the ambush predators.
One of the biggest horror movie tropes is “the final girl.” It’s a female protagonist that manages to do everything right and make it through to the very end of the movie. Crawl’s final girl is played by Kaya Scodelario, whose character just happens to be a collegiate swimmer at the University of Florida, who’s mascot just happens to be… The Gators. This, of course, makes her the perfect person to try to outrun, or rather out swim, the aquatic animals. However, it’s not just her abilities that make her such a great final girl. She’s stubborn as hell, something established early on in the movie, which also means that she refuses to give up. Even as things constantly seem to go wrong, Scodelario seems to spit in fate’s face as she fights to save herself and her father from a truly grisly death. This combined with constant cheerleading from her father creates a character that audiences can’t help but root for, which is an intricate part of horror that so many films tend to overlook.
Like the predators it features, Crawl is a movie that takes its time. The dark, damp crawl space that the heroes find themselves trapped in is filled with twists and turns created by pipes, wires, and the occasional support pillars. This creates a claustrophobic feeling as it’s never really clear where the animals are lurking in the dark. The only clues are the occasional growls and hisses, or moment in the shadows. Don’t worry, Aja is more than willing to show the monsters off when the time is right, but he chooses to build tension during the first half of the film before unleashing a prehistoric fury on our two heroes. He knows that audiences are there to see and he’s all too willing to give it to us, but it’s clear that he wants to see us sweat a little first. The wait though is worth it when these beasts finally do attack as the film features some impressive computer-generated creatures.
Crawl might not be as cerebral as horror movies like Midsommer or Us, but it’s a welcome addition to the genre. It’s got all the elements you could want from a great horror flick, a dark secluded setting, a killer that you can’t reason with or escape from, and characters that you hope and pray will manage to find some way to survive. Of course, it’s not exactly high cinema, but it’s a really fun movie. It’s a movie that bites on and refuses to let go, forcing audiences to run a gauntlet of emotions from dread to horror to triumph. As a lover of killer animal movies, I found Crawl to be a damn good time at the movies and as a Floridian, I found it to be all too believable (especially given the antics of the legendary “Florida Man”).
