Alexandre Aja’s Crawl is exactly what you expect it to be. Aja doesn’t strive to take the story seriously and instead he takes a relatively easy-to-understand, straightforward storyline and makes sure to squeeze out every drop of potential and terror out of it to make a satisfying tale of survival and semi-family drama. With a quick-and-easy runtime of only 87 minutes, it understands exactly what it sets out to do: give us the audience a spine-tingling, nail-biting, and stomach-churning dive into an alligator-infested thrill ride that doesn’t let you breathe for a second. Crawl is an exceptionally fast-paced and gruesome survival story that delivers on all its gator goodness as well as building up some moments of pure suspense and terror.
Haley (Kaya Scodelario) is struggling with her competitive swimming in her native home of Florida before a massive Category 5 Hurricane begins to take hold of the state. She decides to search for her father Dave (Barry Pepper) in order to evacuate with him. Arriving in her old family home, she enter the house’s crawl space where she finds her father severely wounded. As she tries to escape with him, she finds herself trapped with her father as alligators begin to circle around them. As the waters rise and the gators grow in numbers, Haley and her father must work to escape their flooded hell-hole and fight against innumerable gators to get the help they need.
With a premise like this, the goal is straightforward and the fun is ever-so plentiful. Therefore it’s no surprise that the first 20 minutes or so are fairly tedious and bland. Basically it works to introduce us to Haley and her dilemma with her father, as well as get her from point A to point B, point B being the house in which she will experience the worst day of her life. While not necessarily poor in quality, it becomes more of a “let’s get it over with” scenario as we’re waiting for the gators to show up. But once she enters the crawl space, that’s where the tension ratchets up and the fun truly begins to shine.
Alexandre Aja takes the simple story and applies it to a single location, and from there we get some of the best moments of suspense and tension of the summer. He utilizes every dark corner and every puddle of the murky depths to create an endless labyrinth of terror, only instead of a minotaur, we get blood-thirsty and ferocious alligators, who themselves are admittedly well-crafted with regards to their visual effects and sound design. With the crawl space restricting the movement of our lead protagonists, the claustrophobia can be felt throughout as our heroes must resort to crawling and sliding to escape the hungry predators. It acts as a good excuse to crank up the tension and restrict what our heroes can do in a situation like this.
As the story progresses, however, we begin to enter other areas of the house as well as the surrounding environment, all of which are also filled with gators. But through the ever-changing scenery and set-design, that feeling of claustrophobia pervades the screen through-and-through as we’re trapped within the confines of the household as well as the flooding outside where our motion is hindered, unless you’re a really good swimmer which just so happens to be Haley’s specialty.
With the confines of your own home as well as the street outside filled with gators all over, you can expect a few gruesome kills and the film more than delivers on that front. It pays respectable homage to the B-movie creature-features of the past, some of which Aja himself directed such as Piranha, as well as all-time greats like Jaws. The deaths aren’t necessarily as gory as in Aja’s previous works, but the violence is strong and ever present regardless. Aja commits to the carnage of a gator attack and features everything from Haley’s leg getting torn to an attack on a boat to even straight up decapitation at one point. The gore and blood isn’t frequent, but when it shows up, it’s deliciously brutal.
The tension and suspense are exceptionally directed by Aja for the most part, but that tension isn’t as effective without characters for us to care for and ground us, and Scodelario and Pepper both provide admirable performances to their characters. But Scodelario remains at the forefront of the story and she gives Haley the conviction, determination, and fierce tenacity she needs to overcome her constantly-changing and ever-evolving predicament. Minute after minute, a brick is thrown her way and eventually, more bricks are thrown at her. With each throw, she must work to avoid that brick and every other brick after. Unlike practically every other character in the film, Haley utilizes a bit of creativity and ingenuity to make some relatively sound decisions, and it’s because of her ingenuity that she’s able to survive for so long and avoid the bricks. Alligators are some of the most ferocious predators on the planet, but as they state in a moment of pure cheese and camp, Haley remains the apex predator, and Scodelario helps cement her as such.
From the start, there’s meant to be some friction between the Haley and her father Dave, and throughout their quest for survival their relationship grows and reconciles. While both actors work really well together, it’s during these smaller, more tender moments where it feels like the film loses us. These little moments, funny enough, feel like throw-away lines meant to plaster “character development” all over the scenes. The “drama” between the two of them isn’t investing. If anything, it just is. The best moments between the two of them are when they work together to escape the gators hunting them, whether through stealthily traversing the open water, diversion using steel pipes, or a full frontal assault with a gun and/or shovel. The dialogue is predictably very cheesy and campy, but whether it’s good campy or jarring campy depends again on when it’s used. When utilized in the quieter moments, it’s very jarring and poor. But when used during their attempt to survive, it’s campy fun and that’s when the film understands what it is.
Overall, Crawl has one goal in mind and successfully achieves that goal with brutality and not a care in the world. It’s a nonchalant, simple thrill ride that will please any horror fan, or just any film fan in general. It doesn’t try to be anything other than its effortless premise and that is where the fun reveals itself. It’s straightforward in its structure and brutal in its execution. It’s nowhere near a game-changer, but it’s nonetheless a pure gem of fear and fright that’ll make anyone sweat in anxiety.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6MLJG0RdDE&t=1s&w=585