For most readers of this site, director Alexandre Aja is probably best known for his work within the horror genre. When Switchblade Romance (or High Tension) burst onto the scene in 2003, it very much formed part of the new wave of unflinchingly nasty European ordeal cinema; films made since then, such as The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and Mirrors (2008) have cemented his reputation within the genre. But there’s more to Aja than this, and in Crawl, he turns his hand to something rather different which shares elements of a number of other genres – disaster movie, natural world gone awry, and yes, thanks to how that awry natural world affects the film’s protagonists, a large dash of horror, too. The end result is a reasonably diverting survival movie, which takes a tiny cast and (for the most part) a small-scale setting and does good work at getting the absolute most out of these elements.
Haley (Kaya Scodelario) is a competitive swimmer who can’t quite nail the performance she has been raised to feel capable of; on some level estranged from her father, once her coach, she is particularly feeling the strain because if she loses her team place, she loses her college scholarship too. And, hey, this is Florida: whilst she’s been practising her swim, she’s missed a warning of a tornado about to hit the area. Big sister Beth (Morfydd Clark) tells her to get to safety, but also mentions that she hasn’t been able to contact their father. Sketchy relationship or not, Haley decides to brace the weather and go find him, making sure everything’s okay. That her vehicle is the only one heading towards the coming storm, whilst everyone else evacuates, is just the first facet of a day about to go awfully wrong.
After a bit of a wild goose chase in increasingly worrying weather conditions, she eventually finds her father at the old family home – ostensibly doing some odd jobs in the basement there ahead of its sale. But he’s injured; it seems that the storm has enabled a very large, very irritable alligator to get into the basement through a storm drain, and so injured father and daughter are now sharing a confined space with a pissed off lizard – and the water continues to rise…
It’s always a brave decision to base the biggest part of a story in one small location, but via the use of different camera angles, light and darkness, and some good use of surprise elements without every becoming just another ‘boo!’ piece of cinema, the setting here is effectively handled. To draw the full horror of the situation out of the flooding basement, Aja does opt to have his alligator(s) edge towards the monstrous – seeming ever so slightly malevolent, rather than straightforwardly animalistic – but, hey, with films like The Meg coming along in recent years, it’s not unknown for already big scary aquatic creatures to be granted a bit more malign agency than they would have in real life, just as a way to make a bad situation even worse and a screenplay more entertaining. That all said, the alligator theme is fairly economically used for the post part, I’d say; Crawl plays as much with what can’t be seen as it does with close-up gruesomeness (though that is certainly there). It’s also worth saying that if you are looking for a realistic depiction of how alligators behave, well check those expectations at the door. You may find yourself irritated otherwise by some of the ways the film plays fast and loose with things.
This isn’t simply an animals-gone-rogue flick either, however, and a lot of the film’s charm depends on the natural disaster which has literally propelled the gators into the human domain. The storm itself is very well realised, with a plausible, imminent sense of doom. It’s a kind of home invasion, if you like, with tree branches smashing through windows, flood water pummelling down walls and – living in a flood zone myself, albeit thankfully one which is lizard-free, I can vouch for this – waves of detritus getting swept along for good measure. If I felt that lead actress Kaya Scodelario is on occasion a little less engaging than her father David (Barry Pepper) is terms of how they deal not just with their extraordinary poor luck, but their relationship too, then I certainly can’t fault the physical performances given by each, as you really do get a sense of their vulnerability against dreadful odds. Oh, and pitching her as a pro swimmer is a neat way of adding a little more credence to the physical trials she endures.
So, a film which splices the bloody peril and realism you may already associate with Alexandre Aja with something which skirts close to a monster movie in places, Crawl is a decent film which has more than enough to maintain interest and enjoyment, if enjoyment is the right word for it. Elements of natural disaster are embellished with an additional layer of peril in the critters themselves, and there’s an ultimately decent amount of characterisation and development to keep things worthwhile. You might not find yourself lining up to go and watch it again, but this is a well-made film which offers more than enough to pass ninety minutes.