Haley is a young woman who is struggling to become a champion swimmer, and her competitive nature keeps her always trying to reach her best potential. When her sister calls and informs her that their father won’t answer his phone, she decides to drive to his house and check for him. The problem is that a Category 5 hurricane is arriving, and after finding her father unconscious in the basement of an old house he’s been renovating, they both find themselves fighting not only against the hurricane and a flooding house, but also against a bunch of hungry alligators.
“Crawl” is directed by Alexandre Aja, the Frenchman who has earlier given us “High Tension” and “Piranha 3D”, among some other titles both of the horror genre and other genres. While “Piranha 3D” is a nipple-filled gorefest, “Crawl” goes more in the direction of a creature feature combined with survival action/nature disaster. While there are some killing scenes and a certain amount of blood and gore, it’s not the main focus. Instead, it’s a tense tale of survival mixed with a (somewhat) strained relationship between father and daughter. The performances are quite solid, which makes the dialogue between them feel natural and not forced, which brings it all to a believable level.
When it comes to the alligators themselves, they are pretty well made, very much on par with the CGI shark in “The Shallows” to make a comparison. It looks good, it looks natural, and it delivers very well on what it intends to be which makes it a thrilling experience.
Director: Alexandre Aja
Country & year: USA, 2019
Actors: Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Morfydd Clark, Ross Anderson, Jose Palma, George Somner, Anson Boon, Ami Metcalf, Tina Pribicevic, Srna Vasiljevic, Cso-Cso, Colin McFarlane, Annamaria Serda, Savannah Steyn
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt8364368/
Loch Ness Scotland, 1976: a group of resarchers are hunting for Nessie. They dive into the lake and find one of her eggs, and guess what happens next: a pissed off CGI Nessie suddenly shows up, goes on land in full rampage mode and devours them. Amongst them is the son of one of the resarchers, who witnesses his father getting eaten. He manages to get away, and fast-forward to present day he has grown up to hunt down Nessie and have his revenge. He wanders around with a cigar and dresses like someone cosplaying a lone-wolf-cowboy with a scar on his face. And whenever he enters a scene we hear a classic western tune, just to make sure to the audience knows that he’s the hero and not one to be fucked around with…which makes it cheesy as hell. No charisma, no screen presence. Someone call Danny Trejo, please. Anyway: during his hunt for the monster, he stops by Lake Superior somewhere in Canada where he believe Nessie’s hidden. Why Nessie decided to travel so far and take residence in a lake in Canada, you may ask? Well, because. We also get introduced to some teenagers you couldn’t care less about, who gets ready for a boat trip, only set up to be killed and eaten.
