Crawl Movie Review

Crawl is absolutely ridiculous and absolutely fun. Director Alexandre Aja, who you might know as the director of The Hills Have Eyes or my personal favorite Piranha 3D, decides to tackle alligators in his latest offering. The story is simple. Haley (Kaya Scodelario), a promising college swimmer, is worried about her father. No one has heard from him and there is a massive hurricane making its way towards land. She decides to brave the impending storm and goes on a mission to find him.

And find him she does at their old family home. It’s at this point where you learn that apparently the hurricane has brought out massive alligators that are roaming the streets and attacking people. Of course, Haley and her father (Barry Pepper) become trapped in the house by the combination of hurricane forces and the gators. Now if this sounds outrageous to you, then you’re absolutely correct. You have to be able to set aside the improbability of a large pack of gators invading your home and focus on enjoying the absurdity.

I was slightly disappointed that all of the gators were done using CGI. I wanted there to be at least one gator that was real. However, these gators were massive so I guess they really needed to use special effects. There are several jump scares, which is typical in movies like this. But overall, this movie isn’t scary. It gets directly into the action without bumbling around and wasting time on a lot of set up. A hurricane is coming and Haley’s dad is MIA. Then gators come and start attacking. That’s all you really need to know.

There is a little bit of character development but as with most movies like this it’s pretty hokey. Director Aja knows why people are coming to see this movie and it’s not for deep emotional storylines. It’s to see people get eaten by massive rogue alligators that have glowing eyes. That’s perhaps what I appreciated so much about Crawl. It was a very self aware movie. They didn’t try to make it something that it wasn’t or take things too seriously. For example the credits song is “See You Later, Alligator” performed by Bill Haley and the Comets. See, I told you. Very self aware.

I don’t have a healthy fear of alligators, I feel very neutral about them so this wasn’t as intense of a movie as it could have been. If you are deathly afraid of alligators I’d imagine seeing this would be more heart pounding for you. Several times throughout the movie I kept thinking it would be much more affecting if the alligators were sharks instead. But alas, Sharknado has already been invented. If you’re looking for a wild movie that’s totally ridiculous while also incredibly entertaining you should see Crawl. 

Film or Movie: Movie
You’ll like this movie if:
1. You liked Sharknado
2. You like suspenseful, disaster movies
3. You like movies that don’t take themselves too seriously