Crawl (Alexandre Aja, 2019)

[Persona]

Really enjoyed CRAWL. A lean, mean, effective little thriller that's crafted really well by Aja, he and his crew made the most of that 17 million budget. The characters aren't great or anything but Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, and the dog are all good in their role and I didn't want any of them to die. Best creature feature since I don't even know.

More 87 minute movies please.

[mfunk9786]

Man, I have to come in here and vehemently disagree even though I hadn't thought to post my impressions of this film here. It was incredibly dull, low-stakes stuff that never really developed into anything. Give me a 3 hour film with an actual plot that doesn't center around characters unpacking their incredibly banal personal dramas (Dad, you came to swim practice too much - and now not enough!) and doesn't have an emotionally anemic lead actress and Barry Pepper with a ridiculous flavor saver any day of the week. I loved High Tension and was impressed by The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D's considerable (if flawed) charms, but this was the worst work I've seen from Aja. Which means everyone else is making it an instant cult favorite while I die on this hill, of course. Perhaps the worst film I've seen so far this year, and I saw Detective Pikachu.

I love the ongoing saga of people who go to the movies, buy a ticket, and then want the experience to be over as quickly as humanly possible. I'll never understand it.

[kcota17]

mfunk, I agree with you although I will say that I believe people's relief at a shorter time comes in response to so many movies these days (mainly blockbusters, action films etc.) feeling like they HAVE to be at least 2 hours long which leads to so many movies having unnecessary padding to drag them out longer.

But yeah, I couldn't get much from this film. As a campy, action-packed monster movie it fails by not taking enough risks and sticking to its tired formula. And as much as the film tries to take itself seriously with its dramatic aspects, it fails there too. Too many moments where I just kept asking myself "who cares?' with such a painfully forced narrative (she's a competitive swimmer who's going to get thrusted into the most dangerous swim meet of her life... how clever?).

At least Aja blessed us with keeping it this short as most directors today would pad out the film with unnecessary backstory, side characters or subplots to drag it out further than it needed. I wouldn't say people are craving shorter films to get out of the theatre quicker necessarily but the art of making a tightly concise film seems more rare these days.

[mfunk9786]

I was hoping for something quite a bit more like Open Water, but Aja's tendency to add [something resembling] humor to the proceedings was too strong, and it became the "epic alligator movie" instead of an actual exercise in tension. Which is unfortunate, because the premise is pretty solid if it were staged well.

[domino harvey]

This movie sounds like Burning Bright with alligators instead of a tiger

[mfunk9786]

If one or both characters were autistic, it would've been a better movie because it'd have far less sappy reconciliatory dialogue

[domino harvey]

This is somehow the second film to star Kaya Scodelario as someone trapped in a house with a threat, the other being funnily enough titled Tiger House

[Persona]

mfunk, I agree with you although I will say that I believe people's relief at a shorter time comes in response to so many movies these days (mainly blockbusters, action films etc.) feeling like they HAVE to be at least 2 hours long which leads to so many movies having unnecessary padding to drag them out longer.

Yeah, in case it wasn't clear, I'm not saying "shorter = better," just that I appreciate when a movie knows what it is and doesn't try to pad itself out or over-complicate its plot.

Again, I think there's a real sharpness and leanness to the storytelling here and the delivery of the visual details, and while the expository relationship dialogue is awkward and not exactly well-written, Scodelario and Pepper sell it as best they can and I do think it adds another dimension to the film: this idea of the material homes that we try to create over the years and how we (and nature) can tear those things apart in a minute. The film is about physical survival but also relational survival, and in both cases it depends on letting go of the constructs and getting to the core of what matters.

Walter Chaw has a great review of the film and I think he does a good job of laying out its strengths and why it works so well:

https://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2019/07/crawl.html