Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Crawl Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 4, 2019

Creature Features have lately fallen into the Sharknado realm: cheaply constructed, made-for-television, released directly to video as moneymaking fodder rather than something with artistic vision or merit, constructed more for a laugh rather than a serious thrill or thoughtful exercise in storytelling. 2016 saw something of a reversal with The Shallows, a high intensity story of survival, telling the tale of a young girl's offshore battle with a shark in her midst. In 2019, Director Alexandre Aja (High Tension, Piranha 3D) rejuvenates the genre with the atmospheric, gory, and intense Crawl, a simple yet harrowing tale of man versus nature that's relentlessly paced, fearless, and bloody, a fresh restart for a genre that has fallen victim to gimmick in lieu of greatness.

Collegiate swimmer Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario) is so focused on her life in and out of the water that she's barely aware that a hurricane is bearing down on her home state of Florida and on a direct path to hit her area the hardest. When the raging rains and flooding waters come, she seeks out her father, a divorcee named Dave (Barry Pepper), whom she finds gravely wounded in his home's flooding cellar. It turns out he's been mauled by an alligator that has claimed the crawl space as its own. Haley herself becomes trapped in the basement and comes under regular attack from more than one alligator as she desperately attempts to find a way out. With waters rising, the attacks intensifying, and little hope for survival, Haley and her father are forced to take desperate measures to survive ravenous razor teeth and deep, drowning waters.

Crawl can be summarized as tight, kinetic, relentless, dark, and draining (and raining, for that matter). Aja and Writers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen craft a movie of nonstop fear and intensity, spending only minutes at the beginning to develop Haley as a collegiate swimmer and set up a basic family history that isn't wholly vital to the plot but that does allow for the movie's rare downtime moments to find adequate dramatic fill as Haley and her father find respite from alligator attacks and take the opportunity to reconcile a challenging past. Otherwise, it's all about the fight to survive. The film rarely leaves its two primary characters, the most prominent breakaway following a few looters stealing an ATM machine and as many snacks as they can carry from a nearby convenience store; they certainly get their comeuppance. But the movie's success is found in its focus. It's not at all overextended, even as Aja refuses to relent when things are hopelessly bleak and bloody, taking the opportunity to accelerate the tempo and the terror rather than give his characters or his audience a reprieve from the soaking scares, the inundation, and the isolation.

Production design is terrific. The basement setting is spacious but filled with twists and turns and obstacles and pipes and wires and odds and ends to allow for some maneuverability and opportunities for the characters to use the environment to their advantage, to outsmart the alligators who are running more on natural instinct -- protecting their turf -- rather than fighting to survive. But it's also unwelcoming, not just because it's slowly flooding and filled with alligators but because it's dank, dark, inhospitable. It's a classic Horror movie setting: utilitarian, deteriorating, and somewhat claustrophobic. The supporting visual effects are not rushed or cheaply made; the alligators have an obvious mass and scale to them. They move with purpose and bite with strength. And the feeling of fear is obvious in the human characters. They largely run on authentically believable and terror-fueled adrenaline. Neither Scodelario nor Pepper shy away from the physical demands, both obviously game for what must have been a challenging shoot.

Crawl Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Crawl's 1080p transfer is very sharp and stable. The rough brick work and mud and old wood down in the basement are of tremendous visual value, each offering impressively diverse and tactile textures that are tack-sharp and absolutely both draw the viewer into the world and give it critical definition that supports the feel of saturated hopelessness that permeates the movie. Skin detail is exceptional, showing picture-perfect depth to pores, razor-sharp hair, and well defined caked-on mud, blood, and gore, with special emphasis on the squishy, horrific visibility of some of the most severe bite wounds and torn-off limbs. Colors are drab, of course. There is a lot of gray color in the movie considering the stormy clouds, the intense rainfall, and accumulating water, not to mention the atmospheric basement that's a contrast of bright light sources coming from the outside against the shadowy corners. Red blood pops and bright safety raincoats dazzle in a few scenes. Skin tones are appropriately balanced with the surroundings and black levels are deep and accurate, never brightening or crushing vital details in low light. Noise is kept to a minimum, vital given the movie's rather dark visuals, and no other source or encode blemishes are immediately obvious. This is a first-class Blu-ray presentation from Paramount.

Crawl Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Crawl drenches sound systems with a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack. Things begin inauspiciously with a curiously front-heavy shot at the nine-minute mark when blowing winds and driving rains seem entirely the focus of the front channels when sonic immersion would seem to be the obvious choice. Fortunately it's the tracks only real letdown as the torrid rains and gusting winds satiate the stage with regularity when the action shifts outside. Even inside, there's often a sound of dripping water and characters sloshing through it, either cautiously or quickly, of the two- or four-leg variety. Listeners will hear ambient effects from the storm outside but it never overwhelms the stage, even if one might reasonably expect it would in real life. Bass rocks rather hard at key moments, including thunder cracks and intense musical cues, and particularly as floodwaters rush through the stage in the third act to massive sonic effect. There are a few discrete surround effects, such as a dog barking from a clearly rearward position at the 15-minute mark. Clarity to all elements is very good, but dialogue is sometimes understandably, but also frustratingly, poorly prioritized; an exchange outside in the middle of the storm at the 38 minute mark is a perfect example. For the most part, however, the spoken word is clear and positioned firmly in the front-center channel.

Crawl Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Crawl's Blu-ray includes an alternate open with introduction, deleted scenes, a making-of, a VFX featurette, and an alligator attack montage. A DVD copy of the film and a digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with a non-embossed slipcover.

• Intro to Alternate Opening (1080p, 0:25): Director Alexandre Aja introduces the motion comic alternate opening.
• Alternate Opening (1080p, 4:49): The motion comic intro Aja briefly discusses in the aforementioned supplement. A family finds itself stuck in flooding waters and fending off alligators.
• Deleted and Extended Scenes (1080p, 6:03 total runtime): Included are I Guess I'm Off the Team, You Were Never Going to Evacuate, and Don't Quit on Me.
• Beneath Crawl (1080p, 28:05): A fairly standard yet still informative and watchable exploration of the project's history, the story, the supposed realism in a "this could happen" sort of way, filmmaking challenges, tonal balance, characters and performances, sets and production design, special effects, shooting in water, the character drama, and more.
• Category 5 Gators: The VFX of Crawl (1080p, 11:37): A more focused exploration of how the filmmakers crafted the digital alligators, including how they move, how they look, how they attack, and the gore that results.
• Alligator Attacks (1080p, 1:32): A montage of some of the film's most violent moments.

Crawl Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Crawl is a focused film of high intensity packed into a lean runtime. It's a no-nonsense creature-feature that isn't afraid of brutal, realistic violence, hard-hitting emotional strife, and claustrophobic scares. It's a full package Horror/Thriller that's relentless from beginning to end. Paramount's Blu-ray is terrific in all areas of concern. Video is excellent, audio experiences only a couple of letdowns, and a well-rounded assortment of extras are included. Highly recommended.