Crawl Movie Review

I fear that Haley (Kaya Scodelario) will have trouble running into her school’s mascot after the events that transpire in Crawl. She’s a college student attending the University of Florida and she gets the literal treatment to gator chomps. When a Category 5 Hurricane is poised to make landfall, Haley goes searching for searching for her dad Dave (Barry Pepper). Flashbacks show him pushing juvenile Haley hard in the sport of swimming. Their relationship is strained, though that nautical training sure comes in handy here.

When she finds him and their dog Sugar, he’s trapped in the old family home and there’s not one, but two alligators skulking around while the rain pounds away. The pair must use their survival skills to battle all the elements and try to turn their tormentors into boots or luggage (as the former California Governor said in the Arnold not so classic Eraser).

Crawl is short (87 minutes), unambitious, and straightforward. Those adjectives will apply to this review. It’s certainly watchable and clips right along. The gators look pretty menacing and the underwater camerawork is stellar. Director Alexandre Aja has covered this stuff before in Piranha 3D. This is primarily a two person show with Scodelario and Pepper, though you may find yourself rooting hardest for Sugar to pull through. His bark occasionally assists in avoiding the creatures bites.

Even with the brisk running time, the occasional callbacks to the father/daughter dynamic seems tacked on. After all, the exposition of Dave using coaching terms to get Haley to do the breaststroke isn’t exactly Quint recounting the events of the USS Indianapolis. And this Jaws knockoff is a standard and sometimes effective diversion.

**1/2 (out of four)