There’s something about the Sam Raimi stamp on a film, whether it’s directed by or in this case produced by, that always piques my curiosity. Having thoroughly enjoyed 2016’s “Don’t Breathe” (also produced by Raimi) I was pretty interested to see what 2019’s “Crawl” had to offer. Honestly, despite people having told me it was terrible, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Hell, Tarantino said it was his favourite film of 2019!
Hayley lives in a small Florida town and is on her way to college on a swim team scholarship. A hurricane hits their town and regardless of evacuation orders, she sneaks into the part of town where her dad lives to check up on him. It turns out that he is actually at their old family home, and she finds him injured in the basement. From there we get a mindless animal thriller where Hayley and her injured dad are relentlessly hunted by alligators. Everything is incredibly chaotic amidst the ensuing hurricane and creates this sense of unease and tension as the water rises higher and higher over time. This is a running theme throughout the movie as it tends to favour tense situations over jump-scares. The scene where you first discover that there aren’t one but two alligators in the basement is a great example using really cool lighting effects to highlight the gator. That being said, there are definitely some major eye roll moments and times where I just found myself chuckling, pulling me out of the intensity. There’s a really great scene where you see a band of looters come out of the gas station across the street and it’s meant to bring you into a false sense of security (obviously not though because horror movie) and just as one looter sees the light emanating from Hayley’s flashlight in the basement, the background shows one of the alligators taking bites out of the looters partner in the background in almost a vaudevillian way. Honestly I found myself eye rolling and chuckling my way through most of the second act of the movie, but it was still pretty enjoyable. This really is a movie that knows exactly what it is and there really isn’t anything wrong with that.
I guess since this is a horror movie about killer animals we should probably address the cgi, and I mean, it’s not great. It’s really not that bad either to be honest. The film was done on a relatively modest budget of 13 million, so given that fact honestly not that bad. It never really pulled me out of the experience and there are still a handful of cool practical effects in place (ie when the dad loses his arm). Also I’ve been led to understand that alligators are actually quite timid compared to crocodiles but I guess there aren’t enough movies that vilify animals? The same could be said about sharks, but what would the genre be without “Jaws”.
If you like movies of the animal thriller sub-genre or if you were ever wondering what a full length feature based on the monsoon scene in “Jumanji” would be like then it’s a pretty good watch. Just make sure you don’t dive too deeply…
Swimming joke. Sorry, I had to.
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