Up to Your Ass in ... You Know

Crawl (2019) is pretty much your basic creature feature: two people trapped in a cellar with a lot of alligators. If that sounds like something you’d like, it probably is.

College swimmer Kaya Scodelario gets a call from her sister, who is out of state. She’s heard about the hurricane heading to Florida and is worried about their dad, Barry Pepper. So Scodelario bucks the evacuation order and goes looking for him. He isn’t at his depressing divorced dad condo, so she heads to their old house in the teeth of the storm. She finds him in the unfinished basement, which is starting to flood. Also, there’s a big alligator down there, and it’s got him and now her cornered.

That’s about it - they spend the rest of the movie trying to get out or get to safety while the waters rise higher and the gators get ornerier. Some police come along and get chomped. Some kids in a boat steal the ATM from the gas station across the way and get chomped. Spoiler, I guess.

A few cautions:

• The gators seem to be all CGI
• Our heroes get pretty well mauled by these critters, and survive. They get deep bites, lose limbs, etc, but keep going. I say that if you find yourself being swallowed by a gator and his teeth close around your hips - literally up to your ass in an alligator - you will not survive.
• Also, the basement has a sort of flimsy open brickwork wall to the outside. They could have at least tried to break through it.

That aside, you’ve got a pretty nifty movie. The father-daughter relationship is interesting, but doesn’t upstage the action. The action is at least moderately realistic, but there are some fun over the top moments as well. It’s another spoiler, but when they are about to get away in a boat, a huge wave comes along and sweeps them back into the house - through a second story window. Along with a gator.

Ms. Spenser was not as impressed as I was - maybe it was too silly for her, maybe she would have liked at least one or two real live gators. And I don’t think director Alexandre Aja has made a masterpiece. But it’s a good solid nature-attacks creature feature.