Review: Crawl (2019)

Crawl (2019)

Rated R for bloody creature violence, and brief language

Score: 4 out of 5

This movie promised giant, killer alligators, and it delivered giant, killer alligators. Alexandre Aja has always delivered the goods when it comes to splatter horror; even when he's just writing a film, as he did with the remake of Maniac, seeing his name attached to a project lets you know that you're in for a bloody mess. This isn't his first crack at a killer animal movie, either, though his last effort in that subgenre, 2010's Piranha 3D, was a very comedic and campy film in which the gore was played so over-the-top as to elicit cheers from audiences who might normally be shocked by it. This, on the other hand, plays more to his usual wheelhouse of dark, foreboding and twisted. Crawl is hardly the bloodiest film he's ever had a hand in, but thanks to a mix of great creature effects, great use of such, and two very likable main characters who carry the film on their shoulders, it's the kind of B-movie that brings real terror without getting too grim, and is likely to be a mainstay of Southern "hurricane parties" for years to come. (And probably a load of bad direct-to-video sequels.)

Our protagonist Haley Keller is on the swim team at an unnamed Florida university who's just learned that a Category 5 hurricane is bearing down on the state and heading for her old hometown of Coral Lake. With her father Dave not answering her calls, Haley heads down to his house to see if he's okay, and hopefully get him out of Dodge. She soon learns that Dad is trapped in the crawl space beneath his house badly injured, and then learns exactly what injured him when she gets face-to-face with a pair of very large alligators. By the time she and her father manage to elude the gators and escape the crawl space, they find that the neighborhood is already starting to flood, cutting off their escape and leaving them trapped inside their home in rising floodwaters swarming with aggravated prehistoric reptiles.

I can't really say that the portrayal of alligators in this film was necessarily accurate, but just like the shark in Jaws, it didn't need to be. What's more important is that I bought them as a threat, and fortunately, I did. The film was not shy about showing them off, and with a combination of practical effects and CGI, the scaly monsters looked amazing for a rather modestly-budgeted studio horror flick. When the first one showed up on screen, I felt right away that I was in the presence of a live, hungry alligator, and not a rubber prop or a blob of computer effects. These things felt like they weighed hundreds of pounds as they stomped across the floor and swam through the floodwaters in and around the house, taking down cannon fodder in the form of cops and looters in some brutal sequences while forcing our protagonists to never stop except to briefly catch their breath. The very first time we see one, it does not play coy; it busts through a wall growling at Haley as if to say "hi, bitch, welcome to Florida!", and comes after her immediately, setting the tone for how they are handled throughout the rest of the film. The gators are an ever-present threat, a mix of stealthy in their ability to hide underwater, smart in their ability to get the jump on people, and exceptionally tough in that, if they get their jaws on you, nothing good is going to happen. Alexandre Aja knows why somebody might want to watch a horror movie about killer alligators, and he obliges in scenes of people getting dragged beneath the surface, thrown against the wall, and dismembered in the famous "alligator death roll", all while the waters around them turn red with blood. The gore may not be as gratuitous or as sick and twisted as in some of his other films, but it is here by the bucketful.

Great gator action alone wouldn't make this a memorable film, however. If it did, then there wouldn't be much reason to actually sit down and watch it from start to finish as opposed to just getting the good parts from a "highlight reel" on YouTube. That is where the human characters come in. Haley and Dave aren't a particularly original duo; from the moment we're introduced to them, we can figure out that Haley's arc is going to involve her overcoming her insecurities and working out her issues with her father so that she can survive (and that her talent as a swimmer is going to come into play), that Dave's arc is gonna involve him being so damn proud of his daughter, and that, while they're both gonna get put through hell, the ending won't be too dark. But I'll be damned if Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper didn't sell it. Scodelario gets the bulk of the film's action, and I bought her as an athlete who can always stay one step ahead of the gators trying to eat her, throwing down obstacles to them and swimming just fast enough that they can't close the distance to her in time before she's out of the water. Pepper's character spends most of the film injured, but even he gets the chance to fight back, all while carrying the film's emotional load and giving Haley her pep talks. What's more, the both of them are smart, and never make outrageously stupid moves while fighting the alligators. For most of the movie, they are preoccupied with reaching higher ground or getting the hell outta Dodge, and once the alligators come into the picture, they never set out to investigate strange noises or dismiss that growling they heard as just the wind. (Unless it's to save the dog, in which case it's justified.) They make use of everything around them to fight back, from shovels to screwdrivers to crates. It adds to the tension knowing that the alligators are a truly menacing threat to the protagonists even when they're doing everything right; we're not grading on a curve here, these things really are hunting the most dangerous game.

The Bottom Line

Pure B-movie goodness, plain and simple. It delivers the goods, it's got characters you can root for, there's just not a whole lot to complain about beyond maybe a threadbare plot, and given everything this film does right, I can forgive that.