Director Report Card: Alexandre Aja (2019)

8. Crawl

For horror fans that don't really keep track of this stuff, it probably seemed like Alexandre Aja just disappeared for a while. After his hyper-violent breakthrough “High Tension,” he found mainstream success with gory remakes of “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Piranha.” After that, he tried to branch out with more distinguished material. “Horns” was still basically a horror movie but it skewed more on the psychological side of things and had a major star, in the form of Daniel Radcliffe. But not many people saw it. “The 9th Life of Louis Drax” got buried and that was probably for the best.

Now, sixteen years after first catching horror fans' attention, Aja has finally got a movie in megaplexes all over the country again. It would seem he's gotten back to his populist roots, directing a trashy genre picture. Set in Florida but shot on Serbian sound stages, the film was produced by Sam Raimi, a combination that seems irresistible. (And one I'm surprised didn't happen during Sam's Ghost House Pictures days.)  “Crawl” is another down-and-dirty, waterlogged killer animal flick from the French auteur. The undeniably catchy premise of “woman trapped in a flooding house, full of pissed-off gators” caused the movie to crack my list of most anticipated features of 2019. Because I, for one, can appreciate some glossy gator-sploitation.

Haley is a competitive swimmer who lives in Florida. She has a somewhat complex relationship with her recently divorced father, who is having trouble letting go of the family home he shared with his daughters' mother. Hurricane Wendy, a category five storm, is blowing into the state. When her sister can't get a hold of her dad, Haley drives right into the storm's path to figure out what's going on. She finds her father in the house's crawlspace, where he's been attacked by a pack of seriously angry alligators. Soon, the two are trapped inside the building as Wendy rolls in and entirely floods the area. They'll have to battle the weather and fight the gators if they hope to survive.

“Crawl's” script comes from the mind of the Rasmussen brothers, a screenwriting team that previously wrote John Carpenter's “The Ward” and a bunch of other low budget horror stuff I never noticed before. I can't speak much for the quality of their other films but the script for “Crawl” delightfully takes advantage of its ridiculous premise. For Haley and her dad, things just go from bad to worst. What starts as two gators grows to an entire pack. The water level just keep rising and rising, dad pressing his face to the floorboards for one last gulp of oxygen. Just when it seems our characters get a break, that's when the levees break and a tidal wave rolls in... “Crawl” amusingly exploits every possible outcome of its delightfully pulpy premise.

More than pluming just about every situation you might think of after reading that long line, “Crawl” actually functions decently as a thriller. As unlikely as a Floridian home right in the flood zone with a basement might seem, it proves a tense location to set a creature feature. For most of the film's first half, Haley and her dad are hiding in different corners of the tight location, sneaking between pipes that the giant reptiles can't quite squeeze through. There's not even enough room for either of them to stand up. It's definitely the last place you want to be trapped with some angry gators and “Crawl” takes full advantage of that. You feel the danger the characters are in, more room becoming unavailable as the water rises and the beasts close in.

There have been many crocodilian thrillers over the years, ranging wildly in quality. “Crawl” distinguish itself from the scaly lot by making its gators especially aggressively. In real life, American alligators are usually not going to attack people. In this movie, they tear humans apart without a moment's notice. They are also shockingly sneaky for reptiles that can weight upwards of 500 pounds. More than once, “Crawl” engineers surprisingly effective jump scares around its reptilian antagonists. The gators fall suddenly onto stairs, are revealed by lightning brightening the room, or leap from a doorway to attack. Though largely brought to life via CGI, the creatures still have a surprising amount of weight and heft to them. They hiss and roar, slinking across the ground but swiftly navigating the water.

Alexandre Aja largely founded his career on his ability to deliver intense sequences of gory mayhem. After backing away from the gore a bit with his last two films, Aja brings the grisliness back in a big way with “Crawl.” These incredibly pissed off gators sure like to tear people apart. The water is flooded with red many times throughout the film's run time. The gators grab limbs in their powerful jaws, crushing them, stabbing them, and graphically tearing them apart. Interlopers are introduced into the story largely to beef up the body count, looters or cops being pulled apart by a whole pack of gators. Aja, like before, makes every attack as painful as possible. Even the non-gator gore, like a scene of the dad setting a bone all by himself, are fittingly upsetting in their own way. The sound design is full of cringe-inducing crunching and popping.

In fact, all of the sound design in “Crawl” is surprisingly good. In the early scenes, before the flood water really starts to rise, an uneasy tension is built by the dripping water from the leaky pipes and the static of a radio Hailey's dad brought down with him. Once the flood waters truly start to roll in, Max Aruj and Steffen Thum's fittingly noisy musical score ramps way the fuck up. “Crawl” is a well produced motion picture, is my point. You also see this in Aja's stylish direction, which utilizes several underwater effective P.O.V. shots and other tactics to keep the tension on the upswing. My favorite of which is when Aja sends the audience on a death roll with one of the victims.

“Crawl” is a star vehicle for Kaya Scodelario, an actress I keep hearing people talking about even though I've never actually seen her in anything else before. I can now say I definitely get the hype. Scodelario gives an impressive physical performance. She spends pretty much the entire movie submerged in water. That's in addition to being torn up and battered around by gators and waves. Through it all, Scodelario brings an unerringly tough – I'm tempted to even say plucky – protagonist to life. She even manages to inject some humor into a role that mostly has her facing down death, drowning, and gory dismemberment.

“Crawl” is practically a two-hander, between Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper. (Three hander, if you count dog Cso-Cso. And you should, because she's a very good girl.) Pepper is not as convincing as Scodelario. Sometimes, he does not seem as paternal as the script calls for him to be. Pepper isn't always willing to totally buy into the emotions of the material. However, Pepper is similarly up to the physical demands of his character. In fact, that's the part of the film he really seems to enjoy. Struggling with a broken leg and numerous other injuries throughout the film, he similarly grasps a certain toughness.

The team behind “Crawl” was clearly working hard to make this more than just a movie about gator carnage. There are obvious themes of family and survival here. Though Haley and her dad have had many disagreements over the years, they clearly still love each other. That clear affection for each other is part of what keeps them fighting through this crazy situation. The film attempts to link this idea with the movie's scaly villains.  Midway through the film, we learn why the alligators are acting so extraordinarily aggressive. It turns out they've built a nest of eggs in the house's drainage pipe. So the gators are also motivated by a love of family, a need to keep their off-spring safe, through this story.

Disappointingly, this plot point is dropped more-or-less the minute after its introduced, “Crawl” getting on to the more pressing matter of in-coming flood waters. It's not the only way the writing, though admirable, is a little underdeveloped. I know survival is a big theme of the film because the characters lay it out. More than once, Dad tells Haley exactly what her special skills are, precisely how and why she should can keep fighting. The script lays that on a little thick, connecting it back to Haley's life as a pro-swimmer and the challenges she faces. I'm all for adding more depth to our trashy horror flicks but that needs to be paired with some subtly too.

Ultimately though, I really enjoyed “Crawl.” As grim as the material can be, a tongue-in-cheek end credits song choice makes it clear we aren't suppose to take these events too seriously. The whole film is in-and-out in less than 90 minutes, the kind of speedy runtime I didn't think showed up in theaters much anymore. But that's exactly the kind of run time needed for a low-demand, gory, and intense creature feature like this. I'm pretty pleased to see the film has done well at the box office, so hopefully Aja won't spend quite so long in exile after this. [Grade: B]