Movie Review: “Crawl” offers fun moments but gets bogged down by generic father/daughter story

Movie Review: “Crawl” (R)

“Crawl” is a new creature feature/survival flick from Alexandre Aja, the horror specialist behind “Haute Tension,”  “The Hills Have Eyes” reboot, and the extreme 3-D re-imagining of Joe Dante’s “Jaws” homage, “Piranha.” While “Crawl” offers up more monster movie tropes than you can shake a stick at, it certainly offers up fun moments. That said, one couldn’t help but wish that this movie was more effective than it actually is. Translation: “Crawl” needed more B-movie schlock and less generic father/daughter melodrama.

In “Crawl,” competitive swimmer Haley (Kaya Scodelario) defies local authorities in an attempt to make contact with her estranged father (Barry Pepper) during a Category 5 hurricane. Upon arrival to her father’s virtually deserted home — the frightened family dog appears to be the only living creature around — a determined Haley searches the place looking for dear old dad. Her search leads her to a creepy, dingy, labyrinthine crawlspace in the basement (actually, it’s more of a hunchback space) where she soon discovers that she’s not alone in the house. But rest assured. This isn’t your average home invasion thriller, because the intruders in “Crawl” aren’t nihilistic psychopaths. No, they’re massive alligators!

Perhaps the most uninteresting aspect of this movie is the father/daughter story, because it simply doesn’t feel authentic. “Crawl” often goes for a kind of emotional resonance that it never really earns because the writing simply isn’t strong enough. Thankfully, there’s no shortage of gators here. Sadly, though, while there are plenty of attacks throughout this movie, they’re not as extreme as some Aja fans might be hoping for. Not that gore is always necessary, but given the R rating, “Crawl” is surprisingly tepid.

On a technical level, Aja and team do some pretty cool stuff. Aside from a few glaring green-screen shots (the final shot of the film is particularly glaring), the hurricane sequences and sets are pretty darn effective. Look no further than the partially submerged town that serves as the film’s backdrop. The house at the center of the picture is well constructed, too. The basement is just small enough to give you that sort of claustrophobic feeling that you want in a movie of this nature (clearly Aja is a fan of both Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and James Cameron’s follow-up, “Aliens”), although once again, it should be noted that calling the catacombs in said basement a legitimate crawlspace would be a bit of an exaggeration given that they are big enough to host gigantic alligators. Speaking of which, the scary CG gators at the heart of “Crawl” are plentiful.

As for the human characters, even an accomplished actor like Barry Pepper (so great in unforgettable ’90s efforts like “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Green Mile”) has a difficult time rising above the written word here. Furthermore, even though Scodelario brings physical toughness to the proceedings, her Haley isn’t nearly likable enough to carry the movie on her back. All of that said, I really dug the family dog!

I was rooting for “Crawl.” I really was. But in the end, this movie was a bit of a disappointment. Not that anyone was expecting “Jaws,” here, but as a survival flick, this one isn’t even as strong as 2016’s summer sleeper hit “The Shallows.” Granted, that movie got a big boost from a charismatic Blake Lively. “Crawl” also hasn’t got anything on Fede Alvarez’s twisted and subversive home invasion thriller, “Don’t Breathe.”

Yes, this gator horror show has its tense moments, and yes, it deserves props for being lean. But at the end of the day, what it really needed was a little more mean.

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