By Dylon Turner
For the last decade, hollywood studios have released two types of horror films. Innovative films such as The Cabin in the Woods, Get Out, and It Follows that push the boundaries of the genre by using creative concepts to formulate terrifying and thrilling new stories. While the horror genre is evolving, there are still movies that fall back on tropes and cliches that prevent them from rising above generic cheap scares. By no means am I saying that every horror film needs to be an “indie arthouse” masterpiece filled with allegorical messages, breathtaking cinematography, and a groundbreaking script but an interesting concept alone does not make a movie scary or good.
Crawl is built upon an interesting concept with plenty of potential; in fact, the very idea of a daughter and father being injured and trapped in a basement that is flooding from an outside hurricane and having to search for methods to escape is a phenomenal notion capable of inducing stress, thrill, and fear into any viewer. However, introducing CGI alligators, unrealistic dangers, and an unlikable lead hold the film back from being extraordinary and force it to just be at the bottom of the quality spectrum.
The success of any film’s critical reception mainly depends on how a story is presented and how the characters in the story are relatable to the viewer; moreover, characters don’t always need to be likeable but their actions, whether good or bad, need to be justified and believable in order to be relatable. The main characters in Crawl are Haley and Dave Keller, a father-daughter duo portrayed by Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper (respectively). These characters are the main reason Crawl suffers and it is because of two main reasons: they are unlikeable and unkillable.
Within the first ten minutes of the film, we see Haley unfairly call her sister “pathetic.” In addition, there are multiple points in the film where she makes foolish decisions that no real person would make. It’s arguable that viewers would want this character to perish due to it being deserved. Haley’s father, Dave, is a slightly better character in the film. His role in the film is essentially to provide some kind of emotional backing for Haley’s character and nothing more. Crawl attempts to put emotional dialogue and situations in the story but they just come off as forced. Despite the unlikability of one lead and the dullness of the other, there is chemistry between the two characters and it is easy to buy them as parent and child. Where no excuse can be made in terms of Haley and Dave are in their cinematic mortality. There are multiple moments in Crawl where they are attacked by alligators and, despite being significantly bloodied, are up and walking around moments later with no healing at all. It got to the point in the film where I stopped fearing for the characters’ safeties and realized both weren’t in any mortal danger. If the “danger” in a horror film is nonexistent, so are the scares.
The great concept of Crawl is both aided and harmed by the film’s production design. When the plot starts to pick up by Haley going into the hurricane, the simulated storm looks suitable for the story but there are “drive-by” shots where some sections of water look particularly fake. The basement setting that takes up the first chunk of the film works as a nice “holding cell” for the characters. Them being stuck down in a basement because of flooding during a hurricane makes sense though I question the design of space seeing as it is in Florida, a place known for its significant damaging tropical storms. Crawl begins to fall apart as soon as they leave the basement as the question of “why don’t they just go to the roof and wait it out?” never gets answered and the plot falls apart. The film’s main foes, the alligators, are not scary at all due to their visual design and the unbelievable tactics they are shown to utilize. The alligators in Crawl look like models from the Xbox 360 era of video game consoles. Had the filmmakers decided to use more practical effects, I could see the creatures being actually fear-inducing. The scene of Haley with a bloody arm and leg out swimming an alligator made me laugh out loud in the theater. The practically invulnerable characters going against the dumbest villainous creatures I’ve seen in a film in quite some time made Crawl the best comedy I’ve seen this year.
Crawl is a film with a great concept that thinks it is more than it actually is. The script is bland, the visual effects are ugly, and the relationship between the protagonists and antagonists is comical. Films like Crawl, “creature-feature” thrillers filled with dumb fun, existed in troves in the previous decade. I believe that Crawl is currently entertaining audiences because viewers have not seen this type of movie in quite some time perhaps because moviegovers are spoiled with fantastic horror films this decade. If you think of Crawl as dumb fun and nothing more, you will love it and probably enjoy your time spent in its world. I fell victim to thinking about how actual human beings and, more importantly, well-written characters would act in this world and it ruined my experience. The filmmakers think they are making Jaws when they are making Shark Night 3D.
Grade: D-