Crawl – 2019 – R
If you like watching the animal kingdom chomp, crunch and swallow a swath of humans, Jaws and Crawl would make an epic double feature! If you are a diehard shark attack fan, summer audiences have been enthralled by The Shallows in 2016, 47 Meters Down in 2017, The Meg in 2018 and in 2020, sadly a reality tragedy unfolded as a 26 year old surfer lost his leg and life to a great white off the beach in Santa Cruz County at an area known as “Shark Park.” Rest In Peace. Sharks, I contest, have filled more than their fair share of screen time. 2019 belongs to gluttonous gators. Trust me, Crawl will more than satisfy your craving for carnage.
The plot, if you insist, is Dave (Barry Pepper) goes missing, sending his University of Florida competitive swimmer and estranged daughter Haley (Kaya Scodelario) hunting for him as a Category 5 hurricane begins pounding the Everglades. Following a trail of empty booze bottles, Haley finds dad injured in the crawl space under their family home. Incapacitated dad and determined daughter both are trapped as spiders, rats, sewage, unidentifiable rotting things and rising sea waters play second fiddle to two hungry, hungry, 15-foot alligators playing Hide, Seek & Eat with Haley and Dave.
Yes, there are ridiculous and absurd interludes. When seconds stand between you and being eaten alive, do you really check messages on the cell phone you just risked your life to recover from the muck? The answer is, if you are a 21st century college student, yes, by all means do stop and post to Instagram! Don’t mind us, we will hold our breath while a massive gator closes in. (Kidding, she was calling 9-1-1 but with the all the urgency given to a social media post). Speaking of holding your breath, Haley and a breath holding record in Ripley’s Believe It or Not are a done deal. For one ready-set-SWIM “Gator vs Haley” race to the drain hole, she forfeited breathing long enough for me to complete a kitchen popcorn and beverage run.
Even with the inexplicable and the absurd, Crawl was bursting with enough decent and indecent jump scares to qualify as a perfect quarantine movie night selection. At 87 minutes in length, it roars along at a gator kill ratio of one human per every 17.5 minutes so there’s more gristle and gore than actual casualties, a nod to those of you who cringe at high body counts. The big question, does Crawl’s loyal and loving Sugar the scruffy dog suffer the same fate as poor Pipet, the genial black lab in Jaws? No spoilers from me. Watch until the inevitable cut-to-black ending, the sure sign of an indie B movie for which Crawl definitely qualifies—but, it’s a fun watch, worth your time. Unfortunately, Crawl can only be watched on Amazon Prime’s relatively new EPIX channel. We signed up for the 7-day free trial just to see Crawl and afterwards got hooked on EPIX’s original series Belgravia so we may be in the hole for $5.99/month until we complete our binge. In the meantime, enjoy some gator grazing and gazing, guaranteed pandemic pandemonium.
