Movies like Crawl that emphasize simplicity, efficiency and pure entertainment value over grander cinematic ambitions will always have my respect. This throwback disaster/creature feature hybrid from veteran horror director Alexandre Aja (Piranha, The Hills Have Eyes) gets right down to business within the first few minutes and wraps everything up in a refreshingly tight 85 minutes. The plot is about as bare bones as a narrative feature can possibly be: A young woman (Kaya Scodelario) goes to check up on her father (Barry Pepper)- who hadn't answered or returned any of his family members calls for several hours-as a category 5 hurricane begins to make landfall in their costal Florida town. Shortly after arriving, she discovers her father passed out in the crawlspace of his house with a sizable bite wound from an alligator that came in through the storm drain. As the hurricane and subsequent flooding intensifies, they soon find themselves trapped in the crawlspace with an increasing number of displaced gators.
What follows is roughly an hour or so of these two people being forced to think and act swiftly as their attempts to escape the crawlspace continue to go awry courtesy of both the increasingly treacherous elements and presence of their carnivorous reptile friends. While this battle for survival doesn't throw out a whole lot of curveballs, it blends its two genres together very well and remains a compelling, surprisingly grounded affair that effectively uses its claustrophobic setting throughout. There's a couple of corny, semi-forced moments of family melodrama sprinkled in as the daughter/father hash out long-rooted problems in the wake of their potential demise and the level of over-the-top gore is disappointingly minimal for a film helmed by a noted splatter enthusiast, but neither of these things deter too much from the natural rhythm, bursts of suspense and solid all-around craftsmanship that makes Crawl a nice little reprieve from the season's barrage of blockbusters.
What follows is roughly an hour or so of these two people being forced to think and act swiftly as their attempts to escape the crawlspace continue to go awry courtesy of both the increasingly treacherous elements and presence of their carnivorous reptile friends. While this battle for survival doesn't throw out a whole lot of curveballs, it blends its two genres together very well and remains a compelling, surprisingly grounded affair that effectively uses its claustrophobic setting throughout. There's a couple of corny, semi-forced moments of family melodrama sprinkled in as the daughter/father hash out long-rooted problems in the wake of their potential demise and the level of over-the-top gore is disappointingly minimal for a film helmed by a noted splatter enthusiast, but neither of these things deter too much from the natural rhythm, bursts of suspense and solid all-around craftsmanship that makes Crawl a nice little reprieve from the season's barrage of blockbusters.
Grade: B
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