Crawl (2019) Review
On one hand I reread my review of “Piranha 3D” after seeing Crawl. On the other it comes as something of a singular experience to watch one movie that started the 10s and another that ended them by the same guy. Let me just start by saying that I have to give Mr. Aja this much credit: he had to have lived at least a dozen years in a state like Florida to pull off a premise as outlandish, yet nevertheless visually inspired (as much in the Hurricane based survivalist stakes as the JAWS of amphibians that are alligators/crocodiles), as Crawl’s. What’s even more impressive is that while a quarter of this movie is technically “Piranha 3D”, albeit with alligators, Mr. Aja has shown how much he has matured since Girls Gone Guro Wild and expands more on the survivalist nature of that idea (along with a father/daughter dynamic that fleshes the characters out, (almost) no pun intended as there is a fair amount of his trademark violence despite being cut just as short) for the sake of realism and immersion. This is especially effective when the main character, Haiey, is an athlete swimmer and takes advantage of her training throughout.
But the overall effective factor is Mr. Aja’s willingness to juggle as much creature feature horror with as realistic a survival flick as he could manage with that same premise. The enemy is as much alligators, and a category 5 hurricane, as it is flooding and a light tsunami from a levee breaking. He is very much aware that this is nearly commonplace for most Floridians yet makes sure he can break as much ground as possible, via twists and turns, with his experience spanning two decades in the genre.