Crawl Review

Crawl was a simple B-Movie creature feature that was elevated by the quality of its cast.

Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario) is a collegiate level swimmer at a university in Florida. When a hurricane hits the state, Haley goes and checks on dad (Barry Pepper). Both father and daughter face the double threat of rising floodwaters and man-eating alligators.

Crawl was one of those films where critics enjoyed it, but audiences were more divided. It has an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Quentin Tarantino declared the film as his favourite film of 2019 but it only has a 6.1 rating on IMDB.

Crawl had all the hallmarks of being low-budget schlock. It was filmed in Serbia, within a month, used a minimum number of actors and locations and a short run time. It could have been a straight-to-DVD film in different circumstances. The director, Alexandre Aja, has a history of making schlocky films: his previous credits include a remake of The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D. The screenplay was treated as a secondary concern as characters have to take more irrational actions as things get worse and worse.  Even for its short run time Crawl was stretched.

There was unintentional humour with all the foreshadowing. The swimming team was nicknamed the Gators and Haley drove past an alligator farm. In flashbacks Haley’s dad referred to his daughter as an apex predator as a way to inspire her – all it did was remind me of Chronicle.

Crawl can be best described as unpretentious: it simply wanted to be a fun experience. There was no attempt for deeper meaning or themes. It just focused on a father and daughter trying to survive and escape. That was the saving grace of the film because it knew what it wanted to be. If you wanted to see people get devoured by alligators, then Crawl is the movie for you! Considering the film’s modest budget of $13.5 million the CGI was solid. Although the main two characters were thinly drawn, they were made up to be decent people who don’t deserve a violent death. We can route for their survival.

This film allowed Kaya Scodelario to show off her physicality. Scodelario was an actress on the rise in Hollywood: she has appeared in The Maze Runner trilogy and the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film. Scodelario had to be fit due to all the swimming and fighting alligators. She is set to lead the Resident Evil reboot and fans of that franchise should have confidence in her action abilities.

Crawl is a nuts-and-bolt survival thriller that does the job it intended to do.  It ended up being a profitable endeavor for Paramount.