They Crawl Beneath Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

They Crawl Beneath Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 3, 2022

One of the probably unintentionally funny things about They Crawl Beneath is that it evidently began life under the title It Crawls Beneath, which might suggest that another film that at least occasionally plies the same content as this one, Tremors, made the right titular decision by featuring a plural. They Crawl Beneath deals with creepy mutant worm like creatures that emerge "topside" after a devastating earthquake, one which pins focal character Danny (Joseph Almani) underneath a vintage Mustang he's been working on in his uncle's garage. The result is a really weird combo platter of interpersonal dysfunction within the context of a monster movie, and however many creatures are lying below, They Crawl Beneath might have resonated better had it decided on what kind of a film it really wants to be.

Danny seems to be haunted by some kind of past trauma as They Crawl Beneath opens, and things arguably go from bad to worse once his relationship with Gwen (Karlee Eldridge) quickly goes off the rails, and it turns out his Uncle Bill (Michael Paré, this film's ostensible marquee attraction), the guy who owns the vintage Mustang, has a few "issues" of his own. Meanwhile, the region is being rocked by Apocalypse sized earthquakes, and one of those ends up leaving Danny and Bill underneath the formerly jacked up vehicle. In the meantime, Bill had previously been bitten by a weird giant worm, and a specimen has been taken to a local lab for investigation. You can probably assemble the rest of these plot pieces yourselves, as They Crawl Beneath never really varies from the expected.

In a couple of ways the film does surprise, or at least tries to. The worms, it turns out, have a venom that causes hallucinations, and that leads to a bunch of vignettes which are later revealed to just be visions experienced by Danny, but that at least gives things a break from the "locked room" aspects of the bulk of this film playing out in a darkened garage. On a "meta", or at least production finesse, level, the creature effects are also surprisingly freaky, even if the worms in this film are definitely going to remind horror fans of other similar beasties in other, probably better remembered, features. Perhaps unsurprisingly given this film's assumed smaller budget, they also don't appear all that often.

They Crawl Beneath Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

They Crawl Beneath is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Probably unsurprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a wealth of technical information online, and the closing credits don't mention any cameras. This is certainly a competently captured feature that simply can't quite overcome the fact that so much of it plays out in the very dark environment of the garage, where detail levels can be minimized, at least in midrange shots. A lot of the establishing material, and then later interstitials which may or may not be hallucinations (hint: they're hallucinations), is really well lit, and those sections pop very well, with generally excellent detail levels. Kind of hoary presentational aspects like having things drift in and out of focus as Danny experiences pain and/or worm bite induced visions, can almost automatically deplete imagery of detail.

They Crawl Beneath Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

They Crawl Beneath has a rather well designed set of effects which are delivered nicely via this disc's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. Virtually from the get go, there are nice rumblings of LFE, and a number of fun panning "scuttling" effects at least intermittently enter the fray once the worms start invading. That said, the claustrophobic environment of the garage almost unavoidably keeps surround activity limited to discretely channeled ambient environmental effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

They Crawl Beneath Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 1:59)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the trailer for this film plays. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

They Crawl Beneath Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

What Crawls Beneath makes occasional hints at wanting to explore some troubling family dynamics, but then kind of says, "what the hey, let's do a monster movie", albeit perhaps without the budget to justify an epic on the scale of, say, Tremors. The result is kind of an odd mishmash, and those expecting a nonstop array of horrifying beasties might come away disappointed. Technical merits are generally solid for those who may be considering making a purchase.