Despite being "apex predators," you know, top-of-the-food-chain animals, alligators don't get a lot of screen time in the movies. That honor is left to its more aggressive relative the crocodile, but even then, when's the last time you went to the multiplex, plucked down eightish bucks, sat down with your candy of choice, and chowed down while the reptile onscreen does the same? Off of the top of my head that honor goes to "Lake Placid," although there have been a handful of small or foreign (or worse... made-for-TV fare), but the last one to stick with me was the 1999 flick most fondly remembered for Betty White's potty mouth than satisfying monster action. But here we have "Crawl," a violent little picture that shies away from character development in favor of some surprisingly grisly kills. It's good stuff, if this is your kind of stuff.
I'm a pushover for stuff like this, low-rent thrillers where a big angry animal stalks a small band of characters. I can refuse the bad ones, like last year's "The Meg" and 2017's "Life," but here we have a satisfying amount of bloodshed and heroes we root for, or at least, don't root to be eaten.
Set in Florida, Haley (Kaya Scodelario), a wannabe swimming who is caught in a hurricane when her dad Dave (Barry Pepper) won't answer her calls. "Gotta make sure he's safe," she thinks. The house is empty, but the dog keeps barking at the crawlspace, so she investigates. Big mistake. She finds her dad down there, unconscious, in addition to a handful of alligators. They escape to the back protected by pipes that the gators can't get through, and well, that's about it. It's a simple premise, but it's built completely on your ability to accept that 1, there is a house in Florida with a crawlspace, and 2) that hollow metal tubes can deter hungry hungry alligators.
It's almost a clever mix of monster and disaster genres, I say "almost" because this is a creature feature first, with the hurricane part just an excuse to add more water. With a relatively small sub-14 million dollar budget, these stormy parts are the least effective when it comes to the special effects. You can tell that it's not real water that floods the area when the levee breaks, and that's a shame, because the alligators look great! A few shots look a bit cartoony, but the effects team really did a good job making the reptiles look simultaneously like something you'd actually see in a documentary, and only see in the movies.
It's tough to make a truly scary film; audiences are trained to listen to the sudden pause of music, or the camera angled slightly off of the character no doubt about to get bitten so the monster can jump into frame. But "Crawl" does away with most conventions- here, the gators just lunge out from the shadows of the dark crawlspace, or out from the murky water, or from around the corner, or from, well, you see my point. Sometimes the gator appears on the attack, but sometimes they're just wondering the environment, but it almost always without a traditional cue. The seldom set up to the attack left me on edge, a technique that reminded me of "Jaws." Of course the trailer gave away a kill (poor random secondary police character), as well as a handful of surprise "appearances" by the scaley antagonists, but there is a lot of creature action here that I never really minded.
There is a certain suspension of disbelief we allow for movies, but my gosh does little Haley takes a beating! Her her leg is bitten, then her arm, and then her arm again(!), and yet she's seen outswimming the gators! And don't get me started on Papa Davey here, because he's practically super-human! Early on he is seen using a belt and a wrench (or maybe was screwdriver, or was it pliers...) to keep the broken bone in his leg in-place (from an offscreen attack), but before you know it he's walking just fine, while carrying a dog no less! And because alligators hunt mostly by detecting movement of potential prey, the film asks us to accept that none of the gators smell the blood from all their open wounds. These creatures don't look like they're picky about their eating habits. I already touched upon a few unrealistic parts with the plot, but it's execution adds even more implausible moments that almost make "Crawl" a "so-bad-it's-good" picture. It's better than that, but barely.
I mentioned before that I was reminded fondly of the untouchable Jaws, but like all monster movies (the great, the good, the mediocre, and yes, even the bad), there will inevitably be sequels; I just hope that the they don't end up with the gators escaping "Sea World" ala "Jaws 3." Actually come to think of it, make it "GatorWorld" and I'm in. Just think what the collaboration will do for Florida's economy.