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Article by Nathan Hurlbut
Back in 1980, there was a giant alligator movie called, surprisingly enough, Alligator. Drawing upon the urban legend that baby pet alligators had been flushed down toilets in the 1970’s, the movie told the tale of an enormous alligator loose in the sewers of Chicago wreaking havoc upon the entire city.
It’s the kind of scenario that should be taken about as seriously as it sounds, and famed filmmaker John Sayles milked the film’s plot for laughs with his witty script. The result, while certainly no masterpiece, was a sly parody of the killer beast movies that became popular in the wake of the enormous success of the (first?) summer blockbuster Jaws (1975).
While the new alligator movie Crawl features none of the sly humor that Alligator possessed in spades, it shares with that earlier film a B-movie sensibility for streamlined thrills that makes for a surprisingly effective summer thriller.
Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario) is a member of her school’s swim team (in a crucial and obvious plot point) who learns after a meet that a category five hurricane is on a direct course towards her Florida hometown. Concerned about her recently divorced father Dave (Barry Pepper) whom she hasn’t heard from recently, she travels past police roadblocks to his house to find him wounded and unconscious in the house’s basement crawl space.
The source of her father’s wounds soon becomes apparent when a couple of alligators make their presence known, and attempt to finish off both her and her father. Finding a safe space in the basement behind a wall of pipes, Haley and her father must figure a way out of their dire situation as the incoming hurricane threatens their lives as much as the bloodthirsty alligators they share their crawl space with.
Rather than pursuing a story of alligators wreaking havoc upon an entire town, screenwriters Shawn and Michael Rasmussen wisely restrict Crawl’s story to a single house’s basement. Not only does this strategy create an effectively claustrophobic atmosphere for the movie, but also ratchets up the tension as our two main characters constantly struggle in a battle of wits with their reptilian adversaries.
This also allows a real relationship to develop between father and daughter in which their shared struggle for survival becomes as emotionally charged as well, with parental expectations and family issues bubbling to the surface. Rather than being mere faceless victims in a generic horror move, Dave and Haley are given a degree of character depth that makes their plight that much more emotionally intense and sympathetic, and allows you to grow to care about their fate.
Meanwhile, director Alejandro Aja manages to distinguishes Crawl for what the movie doesn’t possess as much as what it does. There are no cheesy lines of dialogue here between human and alligator that make you want to roll your eyes. The characters also don’t make any ridiculously dumb decisions to force them into easily avoidable situations of peril. Best of all, there’s no use of over-the-top special effects that sacrifice the film’s tension with an obligatory display of CGI visuals.
Rather, the director exploits the script’s horror movie scenario to effectively realistic ends, and keeps the drama (mostly) on a more human level. At the same time, he manages to create scenes of carnage that rely more on slow-burning tension punctuated by swift, fearsome attacks that are packed with maximum entertainment value.
Sure, there are certainly plenty of moments that may strain the film’s credibility, especially as the film rises to its dramatic climax. However, as a true B-movie experience, Crawl takes a minimum of elements and exploits the scenario for maximum tension, creating a lean and effective thriller in the process. There are plenty of bloated blockbuster sequels and remakes around this summer that could learn a lesson from this tightly scripted movie’s more modest ambitions.
Rated R.