NEW REVIEW: "Crawl" (2019)

MRMOVIESETC REVIEWS:

Due to a much needed Labor Day weekend getaway, I didn’t get a chance to take any films off the watch list for a review. I’m trying to get a steady Mon-Wed-Fri regimen going, so to fill today’s slot, I’m going to reach back to a film that came out mid-summer.

I hope you enjoy!

“Crawl” (2019)

I imagine I’m not the only one that felt some giddy excitement when the trailer for “Crawl” dropped last spring. Killer alligators haven’t been a mode of creature feature that has gotten a wide theatrical release in quite a few years, or Hell, made it off the Syfy Channel at all. By default, quality-wise, the only expectation one would reasonably need to have is something that was going to look marginally better than, say, “Sharknado”, and has about the same amount of self-seriousness without skimping on the cheese.

Then again, “Crawl” presents some eye-catching talent behind the scenes. For one, Director Alexandre Aja is no slouch behind the camera. His re-imagining of “The Hills Have Eyes” back in 2006 is easily the better of the two versions, in my humble opinion. “Piranha 3D” back in 2010 was blood, beasts, boobs, and Christopher Lloyd, so go ahead and try and act like that wasn’t a good time. Additionally, Sam Raimi is credited as one of the producers on this film, and he definitely doesn’t require an introduction.

The story is an expected simple one. Kaya Scodelario plays Haley Keller, a gifted competitive college swimmer at the University of Florida in the middle of tryouts when a powerful hurricane is expected to rock the Florida coastline. After receiving a phone call from her concerned sister regarding Haley’s estranged father Dave (Barry Pepper) not answering any of her messages, Haley reluctantly agrees to go and try to track him down at his home in Coral Lake that is in direct path of the storm. Upon her arrival, the hurricane has already begun its rampage with city streets beginning to rapidly flood. Haley is quickly able to find Dave in the crawlspace under his home; however, he is unconscious and badly injured for initially unknown reasons. As Haley tries to carefully move him out to safety, sure enough, a pair of alligators invades the crawlspace via a drainage pipe that leads down to the nearby swamp. And from there we have our movie.

To start, really everything about this movie is way better than it should be. How many times has a concept similar to this been made on the cheap with very little effort to make a quick dollar off an audience hungry for thrilling escapism? Aja and Raimi do not operate like that, no matter how chuckle-worthy the material, so instead, “Crawl” turns out to be one of the most satisfying thrillers of the entire summer. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, nor does it try to make more out of a premise that needs to be claustrophobic and non-stop. “Crawl” successfully hits both of those notes.

What really caught my eye – unsurprisingly for anyone that knows me – was how realistic the alligators looked on-screen, especially up close. Sometimes the distant and overhead shots of the CGI wasn’t as good, but down in the crawlspace where they were much more right in the face, they could have passed for photo-realistic a few times. I couldn’t say for sure how realistic they were in terms of scale in that region of Florida, but whatever the case may be for that, they weren’t obnoxiously huge like they were on reptilian steroids.

I was impressed with how up to task the two main, and really only, actors were for this, too. I’ve known Barry Pepper from a few of his works in the past, mainly “The Green Mile”, and while I don’t know Scodelario quite as well, both pulled off two people in the middle of abnormally perilous circumstances. The writing for Haley’s character was an additionally clever touch with making her an experienced swimmer to take the scenes that would call for that to the next level.

The film definitely does take its fair share of conveniences in stride, to be sure. Haley and Dave do take one Hell of a beating in this movie, some of it pretty hard to watch, and yet there were a few instances that make you think almost out loud, “Yeah, that would make you bleed out…and so would that…and also that…”

Other than that, I had very few faults that I could point out with “Crawl”. It’s a legitimately suspenseful thrill ride that never quits once it gets passed all the obligatory set up. Frankly, I can’t help but find how criminally below standard the promotion was for a film that deserved much better. I think it ended up doing marginally okay at the box office, but regardless of that, if you were on the fence before, absolutely give this one a chance when it hits the physical and streaming platforms. This film far surpasses all of its genre standards and was a blast to watch.

“Crawl”: 9/10