Alexandre Aja’s “Crawl” is a lean, mean, scaring machine, an unexpected entry in “Best of Year So Far” lists. At a hair under 90 minutes, it’s got no fat: just a character introduction, a quick setup and then pure muscle, in which muscle is tension.
“The Maze Runner”’s Kaya Scodelario plays Haley Keller, a college student (and student athlete [for competitive swimming, which naturally will come handy]) who’s on the outs with her father and former coach (played by Barry Pepper). Still reeling from her parents’ divorce, a Category 5 hurricane is bearing down on her Florida hometown and dad’s not answering his phone, so she travels to her childhood home in time to find him passed out, mangled and injured from an alligator attack. Then they realize they’re trapped in the basement with two alligators. And that’s it! No overly complicated plot mechanics, it’s a fine example of a tense situation boiled down: Here’s a dangerous predicament, now survive.
Credit to writers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen and director Aja, because they’re able to come up with a series of scares and near-escapes that jingle and jangle the audiences’ nerves. The “crawl” in the title doesn’t just refer to the apex predator alligators, who are basically unchanged from their ancient ancestors from the Cretaceous period. It also refers to the literal crawlspace that Haley and her father find themselves in, where we spend about 65 percent of the movie. Literally and figuratively a tight situation, the filmmakers are able to convey the claustrophobia with close shots, little lighting, clever sound design (from panicked breathing to weird house-groaning sounds due to the hurricane), and the ticking clock element of the rising floodwaters filling up the basement. Time is their enemy, and so are the hungry, ferocious alligators.
There’s a climate change commentary if you care to look for it, and certainly local audiences might be able to relate to storm surges that are another source of lethal anxiety later on. Somewhere along the way the emotional bits of the narrative rear their head: daddy-daughter issues are resolved and Haley gets to use her competitive swimming. But it’s not heavy-handed and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
The alligators are portrayed as monsters, and the treatment is a bit of a throwback to 1980s creature features, as if they were mythical and unreal. Some of the scares are shot through the alligators’ POV. Through it all, Aja flexes his horror muscles. He’s able to do smart misdirects, clever turns, and best of all, he knows how to stretch the audiences’ nerves taut as piano wire and pluck away.