When a massive hurricane hits her Florida town, young Haley ignores the evacuation orders to search for her missing father, Dave. After finding him gravely injured in their family home, the two of them become trapped by the rapidly encroaching floodwaters. With the storm strengthening, Haley and Dave discover an even greater threat than the rising water level -- a relentless attack from a pack of gigantic alligators.
With the likes of Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D) at the director's helm and Sam Raimi (the Evil Dead franchise) on board as a producer, one would expect great things from this film. Unfortunately, unlike the early reactions to the film that can be found online, Crawl fell below expectations.
There are definitely signs of Alexandre Aja's influence throughout the film, especially in the creature designs. Beautifully rendered, the alligators' animation team have clearly done their research into the movements and behaviours of the beasts in their natural habitat, with great attention to detail for the lumbering threats. One of the highlights of the film, watching them sauntering around and floating lazily with their limbs splayed, the animation is smooth, and while it does feel a little too slick at times, it definitely manages to do a reasonable job at giving these animals weight and mass.
Where the film starts to lack, is in its cast and story. There is nothing more irritating than when every single character involved in the film is an idiot, and yet, again and again, our protagonists Haley and Dave (played by Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper respectively) are consistently making irresponsible decisions that put them in harm's way. While this does help with the pacing of the film, as you never get a chance to rest, it doesn't help when it comes to liking the characters on screen or caring whether they survive or not.
Kaya Scodelario does a reasonable job with the script she was given, but you can't help but feel she was picked purely for her aesthetics (she has a youthful look that combines the traits of Emma Stone and Margot Robbie). Her character, along with Barry Pepper's character, do receive a reasonable amount of development and backstory for a thriller, but the argument that the script puts forward reduces this history to nothing more than motivation.
There are a number of side characters that are involved in the film, but they amount to very little, apart from providing additional meat for the grinder. It comes across as lazy writing when a new element or character is introduced directly before they are needed. That length of time between the setup and the payoff really doesn't come across as satisfying. On the topic of meat for the grinder, there is also a fair amount of gore (much to the unexpected surprise of a couple of patrons in the theatre I was in), but apart from a couple of scenes, most of it is quite obscured and doesn't focus too much on the visual aspect of it.
This is a horror/thriller/disaster movie, so a lot of the enjoyment comes down to whether you feel tension, suspense, and fear in general, and to its credit, it does do this quite well. It does follow the usual formula for many of the scares, of panning from side to side, with the gradually building score until revealing the jump scare, but as the film progresses, it thankfully uses a bit more subtlety. Large alligators are scary creatures, and one lumbering towards you will create much more dread than one striking out of the darkness without warning. The mix of jump scares and tense moments, balance well, and the effects are diminished only by the stupidity of the characters which makes many scenes predictable.
The premise is interesting and they do an adequate job providing the lead characters with enough of a handicap to make the situation an issue. Ultimately, the characters aren't likeable, and nothing kills the tension more than not caring about who survives. When the dog, Sugar, is the favourite member of the cast, you know something isn't right in the script. Crawl is an okay film, and it doesn't run too long, but it failed to get me excited for it at all.