Synopsis: During a Category 5 hurricane, Haley returns to her childhood home in the Florida swamps to locate her father and ends up fighting to save them both from alligators.
[Spoiler Alert]
I went to see CRAWL this weekend, looking for some mindless entertainment. I mean, who doesn’t like a good scare? You have alligators and a Category 5 hurricane; how could this possibly fail to entertain? The characters.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. In my review of GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, I said that the audience goes to see a monster movie for the monsters, but we must in some way empathize with the people in peril. Haley (Kaya Scodelario – The Maze Runner) and Dave (Barry Pepper – Saving Private Ryan) unfortunately are very unsympathetic characters.
Haley is a college student who also is on the swim team. Through flashbacks, we see that her father, Dave, used to be her trainer and coached her by telling her that she was the Apex Predator, so she was destined to be a winner. Haley has been estranged from her father, possibly due to his divorce from her mother. She goes to her father’s condo during a Category 5 hurricane, ignoring the warnings by the police that the area is under a mandatory evacuation order, and finds only the family dog, Sugar. I have to tell you right now, the only one I was rooting for was Sugar by the end of this film!
Finding her father missing, Haley ventures even further into the storm to her old family home on the swamp and finds her father injured in a crawl space beneath the house. Dave is unconscious and she loads him onto a tarpaulin and drags him to the stairs. Enter the ‘Gator. It attacks, but somehow Haley breaks free and manages to drag Dave behind the pipes, where she originally found him. Of course, they can’t just stay there, because the crawl space is filling up with water by the second, which Dave keeps measuring with his handy tape measure, and because the levee will also soon burst too.
Added to the mix, are a family of looters who are attempting to steal an ATM machine from the gas station across the street. Haley sees them and tries to signal them with her wind-up flashlight. One of the looters sees the signal and starts to cross but is attacked. The second runs back to warn the third who is filling a bag with junk food, but of course none of them survive. It seems there isn’t just one ‘gator, but a congregation of alligators roaming the neighborhood.
At some point, Haley’s phone rings and she realizes that she dropped it when she was moving her dad back behind the pipes. She decides to risk it and tiptoes out to pick up her phone, but instead of quickly returning to the safety behind the pipes, she sits out in the open trying to call for help! This is where I feel that Haley has absolutely qualified for a Darwin Award! The only bright side is that the audience jumps out of their skin when it is revealed that there are actually two ‘gators in the crawl space.
I have to mention that the cinematographer, Maxime Alexandre, did a wonderful job using the light and shadow of the crawl space to mimic the skin of the alligators, so it was difficult to distinguish them in the in the background. I know that they move faster in the water than on land, but in the small space I find it really hard to believe that one, let alone two could be foiled by these two humans. A crawl space is much smaller than a basement, and I know from the basement that I grew up with and there is no way I would have missed these gigantic ‘gators amongst the furnishings.
Eventually two sheriffs come to the rescue, one being a childhood friend, and of course, they’re eaten. Haley crawls out the inlet pipe that the alligators through which the alligators had gained entrance and eventually rescues her dad. They decide to risk it and walk over to the looter’s boat and escape before the levee breaks. After being show the same memory of Haley swimming as a child and Dave cheering/coaching from the sidelines for possibly the twentieth time, she swims for it and being the “Apex Predator” swims faster (at one-point Sugar even swims faster than the ‘gator!) and makes it to the boat. The levee breaks and they are pushed right back into the house from which they just escaped. Eventually they make it to the roof and are rescued.
Let’s face it. The hallmark standard of a lot of these movies is JAWS. You cared about the people that were being attacked. The audience was even sad when the surly captain, Quint, was killed. Hell, even in some of its horrible sequels we cared about the characters. Here I was rooting for the ‘gator to eat everyone but the dog! I’m sure there are going to be sequels, so maybe Sugar can be the star.
Director – Alexandre Aja
Writers – Michael Rasmussen, Shawn Rasmussen
Stars – Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Ross Anderson, Anson Boon, George Somner
Rating – R
Running Time – 1h 27m
Genres – Action, Adventure, Horror, Thriller
Everything & Nothing 