Crawl Review (Film, 2019) #31DaysofHorror
content warning: foul language, gore, cruelty to animals
A competitive swimmer gets trapped in her father’s house during a Category 5 hurricane. The structure becomes compromised and the house begins to flood. Things go from bad to worse when alligators claim the home as their own.
Crawl is a combination natural disaster/home invasion horror film. A hurricane is a strong inciting incident for this kind of story. They are incredibly unpredictable and can cause a variety of dangerous circumstances like destructive winds and flooding. If you choose not to evacuate, your only choice is to hide in your home and hope it survives the storm. And if something gets into your home, you cannot safely escape.
The quality of the effects is really good. The early footage of the storm getting worse looks real. It’s very well framed in the distance around the cars and buildings in the various neighborhoods. It’s a mix of good color correction and high quality CGI to make the threat of the hurricane feel real. This level of attention pays off huge dividends in this kind of horror film. If we never believe there’s danger, the more outrageous scares later on feel laughable. If the threat of nature feels real, the escalation of less likely threats seems possible.
Director Alexandre Aja’s strength is those big horror action sequences. He knows how to frame and pace these scenes to just feel hopeless. There’s a great sense of realism even in the most absurd circumstances. The real trick here is establishing a realistic challenge before layering in the less probable elements.
In the first big scare sequence of Crawl, swimmer Haley finally finds her missing father during the hurricane. He’s trying to ride it out in the crawlspace of his old house. He’s unconscious and severely injured. Haley starts dragging him with a tarp toward the staircase. Suddenly, the alligator approaches. Everything instantly comes together. Haley’s father got attacked by the alligator, escaped, and crawled as far into the corner as he could. Haley barely makes it back in time to avoid being attacked herself.
Unfortunately, Aja’s strength is not directing actors. The performances are only as good as the actors can make them. Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper are very expressive actors, effectively selling the dangers in the scare scenes. They put in a lot of good work to make the story as effective as it is onscreen. The emerging CGI world around them is believable because of the quality of their reactions. Both actors do great work in the actual flooding sequences, as well.
Crawl would be a truly great film if it had less dialogue once the attacks start. The dialogue in Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen’s screenplay is very expositional. There are sequences in the film that feel like the tutorial of a survival horror game. It’s very “Good. Now I need you to find the wet wall. It’s where all the pipes go into the house. You’ll be pretty exposed there, but you know how to swim.” The visual storytelling is so good that dialogue like that detracts from the overall impact of the story.
Overall, Crawl is a solid horror film. It has great scares and a solid look. The combination of home invasion and natural disaster elements makes for an unpredictable experience.
Crawl is streaming on Amazon Prime.
