I think everyone has at least one movie which initially made little impression on them, but then blew them away during a subsequent viewing. For me, that movie is the 2019 horror film “Crawl.” I won’t share the details of the night when I first saw it, but suffice to say that they were sufficiently miserable to put me in a sour mood. This didn’t cause me to dislike the film, per se; I simply dismissed it as merely a serviceable entry into the reliable horror subgenre known as the creature feature. I didn’t have strong enough feelings to either recommend or pan it.
Then I saw it again, and realized what I had missed.
“Crawl” is a supreme example of a genre picture done so well that it transcends the limitations of its formula and becomes a masterpiece. Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” (1994) was one such film in the sub-genre of crime story. Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead 2” (1987) is another for the supernatural horror film, Roger Donaldson’s “Dante’s Peak” (1997) is a third as a disaster movie. “Crawl” is their equivalent in the sub-genre of creature feature, qualitatively below “Pulp Fiction” and “Evil Dead 2” but above “Dante’s Peak.”
Creature features, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, are scary movies in which the monsters are animals instead of fictional beasties. The key is that they include monster movie scares in believable scenarios, or at least ones in which we can easily imagine ourselves. Alligators and crocodiles are as good an antagonist choice as any for creature features, especially if set in the southern United States. Some talented horror directors have produced memorable genre titles based around those malevolent reptiles. The 1999 horror comedy “Lake Placid” was helmed by Steve Miner of the first two “Friday the 13th” sequels and, one year later, Tobe Hooper of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Poltergeist” fame helmed the criminally underrated campy horror “Crocodile.”
“Crawl” is in a category above those entries, though, for one important reason: It takes place almost entirely in a crawl space. It is unique to see people flee gators and crocs in an environment where bipedal creatures are at an inherent disadvantage. Thankfully the film supplies athletic backstories for the main characters, swimmer Haley (Kaya Scodelario) and her estranged father Dave (Barry Pepper), or else the elaborately choreographed fight scenes would strain to suspend disbelief.
Not that the movie doesn’t have this problem anyway. Like director Alexandre Aja’s other notable creature feature, 2010’s “Piranha 3D,” there are plenty of scenes where characters break the laws of human biology to survive distractingly improbable action set pieces. (Think holding your breath beyond any credible respiratory capacity, kicking ass with shredded limbs, that sort of thing.) Aside from these moments taking you out of the story, though, Aja engrosses you by moving away from the campy, sleazy tone of “Piranha 3D.” Here he cares about the characters and story, as reflected in the unbroken seriousness of its tone, and the strong performances he evokes from Scodelario and Pepper. Helping matters is the movie’s efficient pace; it clocks in at roughly an hour-and-a-half and doesn’t seem to waste a second. Aja knows how to tell his story and send you on your way with quick, satisfying competence.
Finally — and, for creature feature fans, most importantly — the alligators themselves are suitably believable and menacing. Aja even manages to endow a couple of them with personality traits vivid enough to shade how you view the nature of the threat they pose to our heroes.
I must close this review with a disclosure: Part of the reason I returned to this film is that I am a huge Tarantino fan, with “Inglourious Basterds” counting as one of my all-time favorite movies. I was inspired to return to “Crawl” because he named it as his favorite movie of 2019. He was right to do so.