Crawl

Directed by Alexandre Aja, Crawl follows a father (Barry Pepper’s Dave) and daughter (Kaya Scodelario’s Haley) as they find themselves trapped in their home during a deadly hurricane and are pursued by vicious alligators. It’s an unapologetically ludicrous premise that’s employed to engaging and occasionally engrossing effect by Aja, although it’s equally clear that the picture does take longer than one might’ve preferred to really get going – with most of the first act devoted to Haley’s dogged efforts at locating Pepper’s injured character. Such concerns become moot once the initial alligator attack rolls around, as Aja infuses this sequence (and subsequent similarly-themed sequences) with an energetic and purely thrilling sensibility that proves virtually impossible to resist. The movie’s entertaining atmosphere is certainly heightened by the stellar work from both Pepper and Scodelario, while the patently absurd (yet undeniably compelling) third act ensures that Crawl ends on a decidedly positive note – with the end result a better-than-expected creature feature that (mostly) lives up to its irresistible setup. (More hapless victims falling prey to the gators wouldn’t have been a terrible thing, admittedly.)

*** out of ****