Alligators might not have the same cinematic cachet as, say, sharks, but that hasn’t stopped them cropping up in a number of horror films, snacking on humans and generally causing mayhem. The subconscious fear of the leathery reptiles sparks a real level of dread, and you would think that the combined talents of producer Sam Raimi and director Alexandre Aja (who brought some toothy terrors to the screen in Piranha 3D) would be the perfect duo to exploit the inherent scare factor. And yet Crawl never quite bites down hard enough.
Michael and Shawn Rasmussen’s script sets events in motion a little clumsily (Scodelario’s Haley swims for the Gainesville Gators, nudge, nudge, while her dad/coach’s pep talks include referring to her as an apex predator, wink wink) and the splintered family is pure cliché. Shot in Belgrade rather than its Floridian setting, there’s a lot about the film that feels artificial, with several shots looking like the CGI team fell victim to hungry creatures, and the interns finished off the work.
A diverting enough creature feature.
There’s still something to be said for a film that cuts away the fat and goes straight for the meat of the story: throw the characters into a mostly enclosed, flooding space, introduce some hungry alligators and let things play out from there. Eschewing attempts to make it overly self-aware, it’s a monster movie and never pretends to be anything else. On the cast front, Scodelario finds reserves of strengths and the odd moment of depth in Haley, while Pepper grits his teeth and makes the most of his slightly underwritten character.
As the water level and the body count rises, Crawl struggles a little to find new twists, but it remains a diverting enough creature feature even as it falls victim to its own need for speed.
