Crawl

2019 hurricane and alligator movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: A daughter tries to save her father and herself from alligators during a hurricane.

As you probably know if you've paid attention to my movie write-ups, I get alligators and crocodiles confused. I'd like to thank the makers of Crawl for making it clear the entire time that these were alligators.

They're the kind of alligators who make a loud noise every time they appear on the screen. About halfway through this, I was pretty sure it was just going to be gator jump scare after gator jump scare. There were some clever camera angles and genuine tension-packed moments in this, but it was really leaning heavily on the "Bam! Gator Popping Out of the Water!" strategy. The cleverest moment involves one of those convex security mirrors at a gas station.

The movie's really about the father/daughter relationship, the pair of characters trying to navigate metaphorical stormy weathers and survive metaphorical alligator chompers.

No, who am I kidding? This movie's just about slamming together two types of survival genres--nasty weather and CGI monsters--and finding out how these fairly flat characters survive the experience. It's not entirely realistic though the special effects make the hurricane look menacing enough and the alligators alligatory enough. I was probably rooting for the alligators, at least to eat some of these characters, because I'm afraid alligators will been unfairly maligned similar to how sharks were considered villainous when Jaws came out. According to Wikipedia, there have only been 8 alligator-related fatalities in the last decade. Dogs, on the other hand, kill 30 to 50 people every year, so maybe the makers of this should have made Sugar, the father's dog, the real monster.

Would you rather be chomped in half by one very large alligator or devoured by fifty very tiny alligators?

My theater experience was uncomfortable, and I'd probably rather be attacked by an alligator than experience that again. I arrived in the middle of the previews, and somebody was in my seat. I sat a couple seats to her left, but then checked the app to see that somebody was supposed to be in that seat. So I moved one to the right and sat next to this girl. It was dark, so I couldn't tell how old she was exactly. To avoid appearing creepy, I explained that she was in my seat. She stirred, but I said it was probably ok because nobody had the seat I was currently in or the seat to her right that was occupied by her friend. I explained that somebody was supposed to sit in the seat I had moved from and then mumbled something about not wanting to be creepy. There's no way of knowing for sure, but I probably came across as really creepy.

There was a radio playing in the crawlspace while the characters were down there. I checked a list of the songs from the movie and don't recognize any of them except for the one that plays over the credits, a dumb joke. They missed an opportunity to play "Crocodile Rock," but that would have really confused me since I can't tell the difference between alligators and crocodiles.

Movie idea: during a Category-5 hurricane, a girl tries to rescue her injured father from the crawlspace of his house while a bunch of Elton Johns try to devour them. It can be a sequel to both this and Rocketman.

I tried to find information about how many people Elton John has killed in the last decade, but Wikipedia is suspiciously silent about that one. I'm guessing it's about the same amount of victims that Sugar the dog has.

Another movie idea: Tornadoes and wolverines.