Film Review: Crawl

"Grab Your Families, Your Loved Ones, And Get Out. We Won’t Be Able To Come For You..."

With a related trailer which highlights Sam Raimi as a "producer" on Evil Dead and Alexandre Aja as "director" of The Hills Have Eyes, it's fair to say that whilst such claims from the spin merchants of Crawl are indeed factually accurate, it also reinstates how fundamentally messed up the genre of horror has become thanks to the way in which every classic horror movie has been chopped up and churned out thanks to the wonderful notion of remakes and spin-offs in recent years. With Raimi of course being the mastermind and director of the original, and better, The Evil Dead in 1981, and producer on the 2013 Fede Álvarez directed remake, a film of which I can admit to actually enjoying, to say that Aja is best known for his work on the rehash of The Hills Have Eyes in 2006 is generally rather aggravating, when the mighty Wes Craven, director of the 1977 grindhouse original classic, seems to be the subject of a Stalinesque mind-wipe towards younger audiences who may not even be aware of Craven or his impact on the genre of horror. Moan aside, Aja and Raimi this week team up for a rather familiar B-movie creature-feature in the form of Crawl, an overly generic work of nonsense which in some ways is quite enjoyable due to the sheer fact that it's the type of movie which seems to be released at least thirty years too late. 

With a very basic, genre-literate set-up, Crawl sees Kaya Scodelario (Extremely Wicked...) as Haley, a swimming obsessed student athlete who stupidly returns to her hometown in the heart of Florida in order to check on the welfare of her father after a Category five hurricane begins to make its' way towards the mainland. Upon arriving at her deserted childhood home, Haley finds father Dave, as played by Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan), unconscious within the crawl space of their home for no immediate apparent reason until soon discovering the amidst decaying childhood homes, a ridiculously overblown natural threat and unnecessary daddy issues, ravenous alligators have decided to take over the house and are happy to eat anything that gets in their way. With Aja beginning his career with the enjoyably nonsensical, Switchblade Romance, and making his way into Hollywood with unnecessary remakes, Crawl does seem like an attempt to appease as mass an audience as possible, and whilst the exploitation violence within the movie is highly enjoyable in places, the screenplay isn't exactly one to be desired as it attempts to blend into the carnage meaningless narrative tangents such as reserved family issues without any real point to it whatsoever. When it comes to a film such as Crawl, the violence and the silliness should always be the primary focus and be capped off within a harmless eighty minutes, but with Aja's latest so predictable and lifeless, the lack of threat and lack of bite, pun intended, means Crawl is a glorified bargain bucket B-movie which just happens to be allowed on the big screen for no real apparent reason whatsoever. 

Overall Score: 5/10

Film Review: Don't Breathe

"You Would Be Surprised What A Man Is Capable Of Once He Realises There Is No God..."

Back in 2013, Fede Alvarez's "re-imagining" of Sam Raimi's classic 1981 horror classic The Evil Dead could only be regarded as bonkers, sheer bonkers. In attempting to match the sheer madness of the original cult masterpiece, Evil Dead featured perhaps the most lavish amount of on-screen blood I think I remember seeing since Peter Jackson's Braindead back in the 90's. It was crazy but ultimately good fun, and on his latest project, Don't Breathe, the twisted mind of Alvarez has once again managed to create a real winner, one which relies on the dramatic tendencies of sheer, white-knuckle tension amidst the fundamental warped nature of a mind as expansive as Alvarez's, resulting in some radical plot twists, thrilling set pieces and a conclusion so ingrained in the classic nature of the genre it only emphasises Alvarez's love of full-blooded horror. Don't Breathe isn't The Witch but it is definitely the most enjoyable sub-par exploitation movie you might see this year.

Although the set-up isn't one of extreme originality, Don't Breathe focuses on the attempt of three young thieves to break into the home of and steal from a blind army veteran who after losing his only daughter in a car accident is compensated by the perpetrator's wealthy family. With Evil Dead's Jane Levy in the film's lead role alongside Dylan Minnette (Goosebumps) and Daniel Zovatto (It Follows), Don't Breathe is a full-on fillip of tension and scares, resorting to violence quite heavily throughout in a Green Room-esque fashion, and featuring one scene of extremely heavy sub-par sexual violence during the final act it's amazing the film only contracted a 15 rating from the BBFC. Although the film does include twists and turns throughout its' winding narrative, the conclusion does suffer from a sense of obviousness, one that can be recognised from foregone horrors in the past, yet its' 90 minute run-time feels as if Don't Breathe says what it needs to say and clocks out just in time for the audience to cool down. Alvarez's latest is a jolt of good fun, featuring the best use of night vision camera work since last year's Sicario. Check it out. 

Overall Score: 7/10