Crawl

A suspenseful horror film about two heroes who find themselves trapped in a basement with hungry alligators during a hurricane. Clever and interesting characters, well built tension and some pretty gritty scenes make Crawl a very fine genre entertainment. Too bad it turns from horror to action B-movie at the end. (07/13/2019)

Easygoing, animal attack summer nonsense. An alligator survival taking place during a category-5 hurricane looks good on paper, especially with Aja behind the cameras a Raimi as producer. That would be, of course, if these gentlemen had taken it with more darkness and horror. Crawl, unfortunately, doesn’t have much balls, which is surprising given Aja’s history. The gore is missing, everything is hidden either in the dark or behind curtains of splashing water. The alligators sometimes look a bit artificial, but not much. What is horrifying, though, are the dialogues between the father and the daughter. Brr! (07/11/2019)

Crawl has a nice digital setting and, in the second half, a decent build-up of suspense and unpredictable use of the limited stage. Given the seemingly transparent plot that involves a skillful swimmer and her relationship with her father that needs to be healed, it turned out to be quite a profoundly written and directed survival-horror movie. It’s a half-star more enjoyable than the similarly themed The Shallows. (08/26/2019)

Alexandre Aja is back on the scene after a long time with survival film featuring an alligator that, together with Rogue, is one of the best things you can find with alligators. It has a fast pace, a decent amount of suspense, believable alligators that command respect every time they're on the scene, and there's a bit of gore, even if most of it is hidden underwater. I genuinely enjoyed myself and with how miserable has been in horror, I'm not ashamed to give it 4 stars. 70% (09/03/2019)

Crawl doesn't set out to be an animal horror film that in any way stands out from the ranks within its genre, but that's not to say that it's bland through and through. As far as the technical workmanship goes, the film features realistically rendered scenes with alligators that hardly look artificial at all. Unlike Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3D, there are no hectolitres of blood in this case and the film also focuses on family and the relationship between the daughter and the father. They could have toned down a bit on this relationship line and added more dark, horror scenes, though there were a few good scares. All that being said, this is a thrilling piece that will surely keep the inhabitants of the alligator areas away from waterlogged places for some time, and which I would compare in quality to 2016's The Shallows. (07/14/2019)