CRAWL

Crawl Movie Review

Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario, The Maze Runner) ignores Category 5 hurricane warnings and rushes to save her father Dave (Barry Pepper, 61). Once she arrives at his house, Haley finds her dad trapped in his basement, with mammoth alligators all around. The rest of the movie follows Haley and Dave as they not only battle the reptilian danger, but also rising waters that alternately appear muddy and clear, depending on the scene. I wanted to catch this one when it hit theatres in 2019, but I never got around to it--when my girlfriend found it in Redbox months later, we knew we had to give it a shot, and I'm really happy we did! This movie delivers exactly what you want from such a film--giant creature awesomeness, lots of destruction, some unexpected gore, and a ride that starts almost immediately and lasts until the very end.

This is just the beginning!

There is plenty of suspense, and many scenes that are so unexpected you will audibly gasp. The acting is...strange. Scodelario is what you expect, but Pepper's performance is off, but in a way that matches the ode to creature features past nicely. I would have liked to have seen practical effects used instead of CGI, as that would have really driven home the homage to the 1950's films this is surely inspired by, but I have to accept the fact that movie makers with the budgets to do so will skip the cheaper approaches (the budget for this, by the way, was thirteen and a half million, and was produced, in part, by Sam Raimi). Even with the CGI, Crawl is a really wild, fun movie to watch (complete with fantastic closing credits music), and be sure to mind the real message delivered here--don't move to Florida!

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 7

Crawl Movie Trailer