Aspiring swimmer Haley (Kaya Scodelario) wants to make sure that her father, Dave (Barry Pepper) is safe since he's not answering his phone. So she travels to Florida to find him despite the authority's warning of an incoming Category 5 Hurricane. She eventually, found him in their family house in Coral Lake, unconscious and injured in their crawl space. As the area starts to flood due to the heavy rain, she tries to carry her father towards the exit but suddenly a giant and vicious alligator appears, trapping her and her dad in the soon-to-be-flooded space.
"Crawl" rightfully belongs in the plethora of monster horror movies that legitimize our fear of creepy-crawly lizards. But compared to its peers, this movie is very average and arguably belongs in the middle of the pack.
An antithesis to director Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3D, "Crawl" is a no-joke, straightforward monster movie that is full of enthralling sequences and real scares. Though it bends some facts about alligators to deliver the fear, it remains engaging and terrifying as it swims on the absurdity of its premise.
"Crawl" greatest strength though, is not the father-daughter tandem of Haley and Dave, but its clear message on habitat destruction. It sees a creature instinctively fighting off people who it thinks are endangering its children and territory. Alligators probably have occupied that area for a long long time before human that's why they are determined and angry. Maybe, if we go beyond the given narrative, we are actually the true killer of the story for taking away the home of these creatures.
Alexandre Aja might not strike as a modern horror director that is capable of creating subversive films like Jordan Peele, but he is capable of taking crazy concepts and brisking the pace of his movie to brought forth a sense of panic. It's a film that knows how to have fun and still be grim in the process. A combination that is needed to visualize a bleak nightmare such as this.
2.5/5
