Crawl (2019)

A young woman, while attempting to save her father during a category 5 hurricane, finds herself trapped in a flooding house and must fight for her life against alligators.

Jess’ Review

As you may already know, I love bad films. Especially bad horror. And even extra especially bad monster movies. Now whilst not explicitly dealing with monsters, Crawl is at least a creature-feature and deals with quite the ferocious cast of alligators. And coming from director Alexandre Aja, the visionary behind Piranha 3D (2010) and the far less-impressive remake of The Hills Have Eyes (2016), I knew Crawl would be an event. Sam was going to kill me. 

The story follows Hayley (Kaya Scodelario) voyaging into the heart of a category 5 hurricane in order to find her estranged father, Dave (Barry Pepper.) The performances are decent, though limited on account of some cheesy dialogue and the filmmakers‘ clear disregard for attaining any real depth of character. There’s a half-assed attempt at delving into family traumas and evoking some sense of realism; but let’s be honest, the target audience simply does not care. I did not care. This is not a film with a deep emotional tone, nor is it a character study. It is a glitzy, yet gory survival horror that satiates our need for thrills. The only character truly worth our concern is the dog.

Aja builds tension well and sets up the environment within the film with a surprising attention to detail. The locations are suitably claustrophobic - from the literal dankness of the crawl space, to the chaos of the hurricane itself even in an open space. There’s a constant sense of feeling trapped. The suspense is good, with several  respectable jump-scares thrown in; though its’s sacrificed swiftly as the focus instead turns to chaos, gore and gators. 

The CGI of the alligators looks great, as do the practical gore effects. It made me rather squeamish at times, though admittedly borders on laughable. Crawl, for all it’s wonders, does not value realism. The film is nuts, but come on, what did you expect? I found humour in the absurdity, and instead of allowing it to drag my estimation of the film down, I shrugged it off. It’s entertaining. And even with the cacophony of plot holes and the godlike resilience of Hayley and her Dad, I liked this film. 

Sam, and a large portion of its audience, will not like Crawl. And I totally understand why. It’s a silly creature-feature, over-the-top and entirely far-fetched in its story. There’s inconsistencies and some moments that are outright laughable. But on the flip side, you’ve got an entertaining, action-packed film about surviving alligators in a disaster. Crawl doesn’t take itself too seriously, and so I didn’t either. I simply let myself get swept up in the murky current (dodging ravenous gators) to see where it’d take me. 

6/10

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Sam’s Review

Alexandre Aja essentially tried to remake Jaws with alligators. To its credit, Crawl wasn’t as awful as I thought it would be, but it’s not remotely in the same stratosphere as ‘good’.

There’s so many plot holes in this film that I’m surprised the water didn’t drain out. How did certain people escape? How did they miraculously get better, multiple times? How are certain injuries not urgent? And how are people walking with their injuries? It’s as if Aja decided to forgo the human anatomy. There’s illogical, and then there’s insultingly silly.

Even the more emotional moments seem tacky, and wedged in a blatant attempt to make this a horror film with a heart. The ‘broken family’ trope is a horrendously played out plot point. And Crawl didn’t even try to have an original take. Simply put, the writing is clumsy.

But, Sam, what did you like about the film? Well, I liked the title. Short and concise. Easy to write in a review without having to workout an abbreviation. The run time was around 1 hour 20, which felt longer. However, I appreciate that they didn’t drag this out. Maybe I’m being overly harsh. Maybe. The build up of tension was well done. The tight space, paired with the unseen predators is a brilliant set up. It’s an intriguing premise too, being trapped in a flooding house with alligators.

It’s a bizarre film. There’s no deep meaning to be found here, no real emotional story. For horror enthusiasts there’s plenty to enjoy, perhaps. Good tension, and a respectable amount of gore. But to call it entertaining is a stretch.

3.5/10