Director: Alejandra Aja
Starring: Kaya Scodelario,
My Rating: Liked It
Box Office Performance: Domestic total as of Aug 5th is $36,438,487/Foreign total at $17,600,000. Pretty impressive total of $54 Million for a movie with a budget of just $13.5 Million.
Crawl has an overly basic story, but I think it works, especially since it runs at an extremely lean 87 minutes. The story takes place in Florida during a Category 5 hurricane. The main character quickly gets into a perilous situation in which she and her father are stuck in the crawl space of their old house, completely surrounded by monstrous alligators.
A movie like this reminds me of such films as Phonebooth or Buried. The movie confines itself to one space, this time it being a disgusting and dreary crawl space. And because of this the movie really has to be stylish to elevate the movie above it's limited locale. I think Crawl, Phonebooth, and Buried are all good examples of movies that pull this off well.
Overall I'd say if you want a quick, adrenaline pumping ride, then give Crawl a try. The alligators look excellent. The actors seem very dedicated to what they're doing. It was entertaining, brutally bloody, and also over in the blink of an eye, in terms of most movies that come out these days.