Crawl is a bloody fine gator-fest
There isn’t better fodder for a horror film than apex predators. Despite the fact that humanity, the most apex of apex predators, has so dominated the planet that most animals belonging to the apex category are endangered, we are still instinctively terrified of them on a grand scale.
To be fair, being eaten alive sounds in no way enjoyable, and these creatures are more than capable of killing humans in a variety of miserable ways given the right circumstances.
But we’ve engineered the world to avoid these dangerous animals at all costs, so we’re much more likely to be bitten by the guy standing behind us at Subway than we are by a bear or a shark (getting bitten by a guy at Subway should be its own horror movie category).
Still, it’s not surprising that creature features are popular. If you can think of an animal, it’s probably got its own horror film. The more domestic the animal, the goofier the film (Cujo notwithstanding). There have been films about rabbits and sheep and cows and all manner of nonsense. But the ones we remember the best are the ones with teeth.
Alligators (and crocodiles) are a popular danger in film—Indiana Jones throws a cult leader to some in Temple of Doom, Betty White feeds a giant one in Lake Placid. They’re a distinctly American one, as well, since we don’t have anywhere near the number of terrifying creatures as Australia or South Africa.
Directed by Alexandre Aja, Crawl is a new creature feature that highlights these animals in a mostly predictable (but fun!) way. Haley (Kaya Scodelario) is student at the University of Florida, attending on swimming scholarship. She seems to be good, but not the best, coming in second during a freestyle race at practice.
The beginning of the film is a highlight reel of her time in the water, often accompanied by her father and one time coach, Dave (Barry Pepper). We get the impression that he always pushed her, probably harder than he needed to, and that she harbors a sort of resentment towards him, especially now that he has split up with Haley’s mother.
After practice, Haley receives a call from her sister Beth, who says she can’t get in touch with Dave and is worried about him, as a hurricane is bearing down on the coast. Haley decides to drive to their home town to find him, and like a true Floridian, ignores warnings about impassable roads from her friendly local police officers.
After a few missteps, she finds her father at their home, which he supposedly sold years ago. He is stuck in the basement of the house, having been attacked by a large alligator that apparently came in through a storm drain. As the category five hurricane dumps sheets of water on the town, Haley and Dave are trapped in a basement gradually filling with water and alligators.
Like most horror movies, Crawl expects audiences to ignore certain realities in favor of new ones the filmmaker has chosen.
First, even though the basement is surrounded by brick shaped into diamond patterns that conveniently let water rush in from the outside, it would be impossible to break through these bricks by kicking the weak sections of the wall or, maybe, to use the shovel you’ve been fending the gators off with to create a hole large enough to crawl through.
Second, alligators absolutely never get full, can easily leap into a boat like the shark at the end of Jaws, and are very, very sneaky.
Third, a second-string college swimmer can easily outswim highly evolved aquatic lizards. However, if you choose not to think about these things and just enjoy the alligator carnage, Crawl is a pretty good time.
There might be more going on in Crawl than alligator-eats-man horror. Most horror has something else to say beyond blood and guts. It could easily be seen as a warning about climate change. If we don’t get carbon emissions under control, storms like the one in the film will likely become more intense and more frequent, which could lead to some troubling scenarios.
Robert Frost holds with those who favor fire for the end of the world. I think I might prefer something more reptilian.