Crawl Movie Review

Siddarth Srinivas

Crocodiles are terrifying creatures. They may seem a little too lazy at first, but boy you don’t want to come face-to-face with one of them even in your dreams, because you will be waking up with a nightmare. And Hollywood has been pretty good in this little sub-genre, delivering films such as Lake Placid and Primeval. In the hands of director Alexandre Aja, who is known for such crazy, high-tension films such as The Hills Have Eyes and Mirrors, the crocodiles turn all the more dangerous and give us a worthy experience which is now called ‘Crawl’.

The film on paper is as short as an IMDb plot, but what it succeeds in doing is that it keeps the momentum going with an constantly striking pattern. At every turn, there is a tense moment, a jump scare or a survival attempt, which makes sure that we do not lose our attention. Though the first half is the better of the two thanks to the suspense quotient, the film does give you a good share of well-choreographed sequences on the whole. Aja nicely adds a believability factor by keeping his protagonists vulnerable to both the situation and the gators at the same time, as they injure themselves and make mistakes in the process of survival. There’s no wastage of time at the start either, as there’s just one scene to educate us that Crawl’s lead in Kaya Scodelario (not great but effective enough) is a very good swimmer. The best things that Aja achieves here are undoubtedly the jump scares, which are set in the right places and not just infused for the sake of it.

Crawl gets better than the usual Hollywood B-movie because of its production values and technical advantage that doesn’t act as a distraction. The makers have got hold of a house that can pay heed to all the drama, and have put in the extra effort to design the creatures in the most realistic way possible. And such smartness in the production leads to some highly enjoyable scenes like the ones where the crocodiles take over a petrol bunk, and the memorable shower closet episode in the third act.

Looking at it from an aerial view, Crawl isn’t a film that was made to win over the critics or aim at being the next big magnet in Hollywood. To be honest, it doesn’t even want to leave an aftertaste. Though Alexandre Aja’s latest offering may not have the finesse of a Don’t Breathe or the diversity of a Nerve, it sure is a film that you cannot write off. For your 90 minutes in the cinema hall, here’s a film that proves a bang for your buck. You are most likely to walk (or crawl) out of the hall with a satisfactory feeling.

Bottomline: Alexandre Aja’s latest is a brisk, terrifying crocodile thriller

Rating: 3/5