Film Review - Crawl (15)

We can defeat these pea-brained lizard shits.

Crawl is the last hurrah - at least here in the UK - for summertime cinema 2019. It's also an homage to another movie summer, that of 1975. Back then New Jersey waters were being terrorised by a great white shark in Jaws. This holiday season, however, it's a Florida home under attack, from not one but an entire (I'm not clear on the collective noun so I'm going to be creative) ... chomp of alligators. No non-sci-fi creature feature is ever going to match the genius of Spielberg's fish tale, on that we can surely agree. The only question is - can this new one summon up enough thrills for a fun and scary, if derivative holiday ride? That would be a giant razor-toothed YES.

Kaya Scodelario played Haley, a college student and competetive swimmer, who seeks out her father when he goes incommunicado in the middle of a category 5 hurricane. Having located him injured in the old family home, she discovers that they have non-human company on unexpected day-release from a local alligator farm. Trapped in a flooding basement, father and daughter struggle to escape before they're either drowned or snapped up by ravenous reptilian predators.

Crawl is helmed by Alexandre Aja, the French director who at his best brought us nasty-artsy slasher movie Haute Tension aka Switchblade Romance back in 2003. In short, he knows how to create something lean, blood-stained and suspenceful, which is precisely what he does here. There's minimal time devoted to set-up. Establish your heroine, immerse her (often literally) in a deadly situation and start cranking up the clautrophobic tension. Any exposition required to beef up character, do it on the move, however unlikely such interactions might seem in the circumstances. Then when the anxiety levels are nice and high, unleash scaly slithering hell. 

Dumb aquatic adventure movies are now a Hollywood staple (check out last year's The Meg if you're in doubt). Crawl rises above the floaters, chiefly by being exceedingly well-made and snappily executed. The hurricane shots have a brooding beauty to them, while the production team have created a realistically storm-whipped and rapidly-flooding landscape. The alligators crucially feel real, getting a lot more screen-time than Jaws ever did and earning screams from characters and audience alike. Aja is a great visual storyteller too, constructing and shooting the action with imagination and panache. He exploits the Florida house's crawl-space for all its horror-movie potential and has even more fun once water-levels push our protagonists higher. When Haley gets properly swimming he even reworks that old Spielberg trick - creature POV shot of thrashing human legs - to nerve-tearing effect. 

Performance-wise Scodelario (the Maze Runner movies) toughs out a good physical performance as Haley, with Barry Pepper (her Maze co-star who once went Saving Private Ryan) dragging himself through equivalent hell as her dad. Both are sufficiently engaging - to say nothing of bloodied, grimy and scared - to earn our concern. Admittedly the dialogue they're given is laughable (see above movie quote as prime example), but the screenwriters have had the good sense to make the escalating action as nuts as possible and to throw in a cute dog, so that we're far too worried to care what the humans are saying.

Look - if it's exquisitely crafted verbiage and sensible storytelling you're looking for, watch something written by Aaron Sorkin. If however you fancy 90 minutes' streamlined excitement, with characters locked in a gruelling, muddy, blood-and-gristle fight for survival against vicious critters that can get them in water and out of it, then Crawl delivers. It's not Jaws. Hell, not even Jaws II is Jaws. But it is as good a B-movie thrill-ride as you'll experience this - or most - summers. Dive in and swim for your life.

Gut Reaction: A lot of wincing and reactive laughter. What began with hand gripping face ended in full-body contortion. 

Memorable Moment: Why looting in a hurricane-flood is just a bad idea.

Ed's Verdict: 7.5/10. I won't defend it in terms of plot logic, but Crawl is a visceral, intense, funny, hugely entertaining monster flick, with more hungry 'gators than you can shake a stick at. (Word to the wise - you're going to need a bigger stick.)