FILM REVIEW OF "CRAWL" (2019)

Hollywood has been making movies about ravenous alligators as far back as "Sparrows" (1926) when Mary Pickford guided a group of innocent, young orphans through a gator infested swamp. Twenty years ago, "Lake Placid" (1998) and its three sequels featured a large alligator with a voracious appetite. The first "Lake Placid" remains the best, so avoid the rest. Last year, Dwayne Johnson tangled with a supersized alligator in "Rampage." The Asylum has churned out its share of home video schlock about alligators, specifically "Mega Python vs. Gatoroid" (2011), as well as the gator's distantly related cousin the crocodile. Numerically, sharks reign as Hollywood's alpha predator in more than 50 movies than either alligators or crocodiles. The latest gator epic is "Piranha 3D" director Alexandre Aja's "Crawl," (*** OUT OF ****) a weather-beaten disaster saga co-starring Barry Pepper and Kaya Scodelario as father and daughter trapped in the basement of a southwest Florida house during a Category 5 hurricane. Reportedly, an incident involving an actual gator attack on humans during Hurricane Florence inspired this film.

"Crawl" reminded me of "The Shallows" because it takes place in one location. Meantime, this atmospheric, white-knuckled, nail-biting yarn will keep you just as alert, poised on the edge of your seat, as you wait for the next gator strike. Aja & "Dark Feed" scenarists Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen have done an exemplary job of establishing the characters, the setting, and the conflict. Ignoring evacuation warnings, a daughter risks her life to save her father from dying in an isolated community that has been evacuated under the worst possible weather conditions. No sooner have the filmmakers confined father and daughter to a hopeless position than two, hideous, heavily scaled, twenty-foot-long carnivores scour the basement for them while more circle outside it. Most of the action occurs beneath the house as the flood waters rise ominously, and our hero and heroine bide their time patiently before they try to break out.

Naturally, horror movies exaggerate evil because you're supposed to be frightened. Aja and his CGI wizards have forged some flawless gators that look remarkably believable. These gators are as ferocious as the gator in the crime thriller "Eraser" (1996) that a Witness Protection Specialist (Arnold Schwarzenegger) encountered. These reptiles act like black mambas. They see you. They devour you. At the very least, they snack on you, and the scary thing is how often father and daughter keep getting bitten but never shirk from their filial duty to fend for each other. Of course, real-life gators would be inclined to vamoose, but these melodramatic gators display no fear and hunt in groups. An overhead drone shot of a first responder in the water with gators approaching from all directions depicts their teamwork. The gators appear every bit as vicious as they sound when they crunch on the bones of their victims.

Lately, life hasn't been a picnic for Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario of "The Maze Runner"), and her performance on the swim team at the University of Florida at Gainesville hasn't been what she expected. Haley's older sister Beth (Morfydd Clark of "Love & Friendship") rings her up because she hasn't been able to reach their father. Haley tries to contact him, but she fares no better. Finally, she ignores the stern warnings of the authorities, and she strikes out on her own. She finds her father at their childhood house which evokes memories of happier days with her mother and sister. Dave Keller (Barry Pepper of "Saving Private Ryan") was repairing the house when an alligator blundered into the basement and took a bite out of his shoulder. Dave has taken refuge behind a series of pipes that the gator can neither squeeze through nor destroy with its jaws. Imagine Haley's shock when she is confronted by one of these huge critters after she trotted down the stairs into the basement. Miraculously, she evades the big lizard, but loses her cell phone, and must risk her neck to retrieve it.

Aja and his writers knew that cornering our hero and heroine under such circumstances generates spine-tingling suspense, but to concentrate strictly on them as they await their fate would exhaust our patience. When disasters strike, looters take advantage of the predicament, and "Crawl" has a family of brothers and sister looting a convenience store. They arrived by boat, and they are the only living beings that a desperate Haley sees as she struggles to come up with a plan-B. Little do these looters know what awaits them as several gators cruise in for a killing. The looters confiscate a money machine, but they never get to see the rewards of their crime. When these gators attack, they are fearless, and they swim in groups to maximize their attacks on humans. Naturally, the looters and later the authorities have no clue what lurks beneath the trembling flood waters, and they pay a tragic price for their ignorance. The threat of death lurks constantly around Haley and Dave, and matters worsen throughout its scanty 87 minutes. Aja wrings considerable suspense out of Haley's desperate bursts of swimming to dodge the gators. Dave warns her not to swim out through a pipeline beneath the house because the gators entered the basement through it. Nevertheless, Haley finds no alternatives as the waters rise and swims cautiously along it until she glimpses a huge gator cruising past the opening. Like all stomach-churning chillers, "Crawl" knows when to spring unexpected jump scares on audiences. One of the scariest is a tree which bursts through a kitchen window with such spontaneity that it catches you off-guard. The cat and mouse game between Haley and the increasing number of gators heightens the horror and tension. At one point, she has her hand trapped in a gator's mouth and must free herself without losing her fingers.

An ideal outing for either a rainy day or night, "Crawl" delivers thrills and chills galore with creatures that will make your skin crawl.