Only in Florida

I bet the Scorch is looking pretty good right about now

The main character of the film is Hayley (Kaya Scodelario), a competitive swimmer with the University of Florida because of irony. Upon realizing that her estranged father Dave (Barry Pepper) isn’t responding to any phone calls, Hayley postpones evacuating from the massive, incoming hurricane to find him. She does so in the crawl space of their old home…along with a s**tload of alligators. Before you can say from bad to worse, their house starts flooding due to the previously mentioned hurricane. An event which leaves the two of them even more trapped.

Why are the alligators so keen on hunting them? Well, because movie predators are far more ravenous than in real life. [spoiler]It’s also eventually revealed that the alligators are protecting the nest that they made in the crawl space. Though why the mother would build their nest underground, away from the sunlight the eggs need, and not secluded from humans and other alligators is another story. [/spoiler]

A brief internet search, which as we all know is always accurate, reveals that the average human can swim about three mph. An alligator can swim up to 20 mph. Dave and Hayley are also able to keep moving after receiving more punishment than you would think would be possible. Both of these things show that alongside the spoiler mentioned above, Crawl and movies like it require a certain willing suspension of disbelief. Not that that necessarily ruins the film.

The father-daughter relationship in this film left something to be desired. There is this one nice scene where Dave and Hayley air out there family baggage, which features an excellent performance from both Scodelario and Pepper. Despite that, I still found myself mostly apathetic. I think it might be because that is pretty much the only heartwarming scene where the characters aren’t focused on survival.

This movie is littered with jump scares. Most of which are the culmination of some buildup, which is the right way to do jump scares, but still. With that said, there isn’t just jump scares as there also the claustrophobia and tension that comes with being trapped in an enclosed space with a dangerous predator.

The ending of Crawl was also noteworthy because [spoiler] the movie just ends. We see the two main characters get rescued, and that’s it. Roll the credits. No Hollywood epilogue of Dave finally coming to see another one of Hayley’s matches. No sequel set-up of any kind. That is such an old school movie ending. It’s refreshing, and I respect the film for it. [/spoiler]

Overall, this movie is the antithesis of director Alexandre Aja’s previous film, Piranha 3D. They’re both violent horror movies that concern the fight for survival against an aquatic animal and are certainly entertaining enough. The difference lies in the fact that Crawl is considerably less campy than its predecessor. This time there isn’t anything like two porn stars skinny dipping in slow-mo, in 3D, and set to opera music. No, I am not making that up(NSFW), why do you ask?