Each week, I will look at a movie that is currently in theaters or available to stream and give some reasons why people should watch it. This isn’t necessarily a film critique, rather, an overview of what I think is enjoyable about the film, and why it’s worth seeing. This week, we’ll be looking at Alexandre Aja’s Crawl.
The last horror movie we’ll look at in 2021 is Crawl. When horror fans think of the various sub genres and the best movie within them, finding a good crocodile/alligator film is essentially impossible. Lake Placid was fine and is probably the most popular of a scarce list, but nothing like the great Jaws for the world of sharks. In fact, you might go several shark movies deep before you hit on a gator movie. Well, we look at Crawl today because I think it’s the best of this niche of horror. It’s a movie that doesn’t fall off the tracks of being ridiculously unbelievable, and the tension throughout is palpable. The run time is a quick 87 minutes, so aside from the very beginning there are not many moments the viewer can relax. The behavior of the alligators is positive too, they don’t do anything supernatural yet they pose a formidable challenge to the characters (unlike the Lake Placid 2 gators that were so obviously floating through the air on a wire.) If you’re a horror fan, I think this won’t rank on your all time favorites, but give it a watch if you want to raise the bar on your expectations of these kinds of movies.
Crawl is currently available to stream on Hulu.
