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A cheesy beastie buffet: Rashid Irani reviews creature feature, Crawl
A father-daughter duo and their pup fight to evade hungry alligators as their home in Florida floods.
Co-produced by horror-meister Sam Raimi (Evil Dead; Evil Dead) and directed with a fair degree of crowed-pleasing panache by Alexandre Aja (of The Hills Have Eyes 2006 remake), Crawl is a sink-or-swim survival thriller involving a father-daughter duo who find themselves up against some very hungry computer-generated alligators.
The toothy reptiles have entered their rapidly flooding Florida family home during a massive hurricane. The director orchestrates the scares adroitly through the film’s scant 85-minute runtime.
On the other hand, the narrative loses momentum every time there are flashbacks to the daughter’s past aquatic prowess. The presence of the pet dog serves barely any purpose, other than to provide some light relief from the chomp-chomp action.
The gore quotient is cranked up to levels that might leave the faint-hearted writhing in discomfort. All seen and squirmed, Crawl is cheesy fun while it lasts.
