What happens when you take a director famous for crafting stylishly entertaining horror movies on relatively low budgets, partner him up with Sam Raimi’s production company, and tell him to go nuts? Surprisingly enough, you get one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite films of 2019.
A father/daughter story, Crawl follows Kaya Scodelario’s Haley as she ignores hurricane evacuation warnings to go looking for her father, who she finds injured in his home. Trapped by the incoming storm and rising floodwaters, the duo faces a race against time to reach safety. Did we mention the alligators? Because there are also alligators.
Dropping hulking CGI reptiles into the middle of what was already painted as a hybrid of disaster survival thriller and family drama turned out to be a mark of demented genius, because Crawl is comfortably one of the best creature features to come along in years.
An 83% Rotten Tomatoes score, a 75% user rating, and a $91 million box office haul on a $13 million budget would indicate as much, and there’s a hell of a lot of fun to be had. Netflix subscribers clearly agree, with Crawl having exploded out of nowhere to crash right into the Top 10 in fifth position, as per FlixPatrol.
