Category: Reviews

Released: January 2018

Director: Miguel Angel Vivas

Run Time: 89 Minutes

Not Rated

Distributor: Embankment Films

Genre: Horror Thriller

Cast:
Rachel Nichols: Sarah Clark
Laura Harring: Madeleine
Ben Temple: Isaac
Gillian Apter: Sarah’s Mom

I’ve always been a huge fan of horror movies.  It’s a genre that I’ve followed since I was a kid.  I didn’t really start getting into horror, though, until 2005 when House of Wax was released to theaters.  A couple years after that, though, I started hearing about this French slasher flick called High Tension.  That was my introduction not just to Alexandre Aja’s films, but to French horror in general.  High Tension was one of the most violent and brutal horror movies that I saw up to that point, and I was utterly entranced by it.  So, I began to pay more attention to horror films from France like Irreversible, Frontiere(s), and Martyrs.  There was another one that was released back in 2006/2007 which ended up being one of the goriest movies I’ve ever seen: Inside(À l’intérieur).  It was shocking, bold, and brutal.  It was widely regarded as one of the best horror films of the decade.  When it was announced that Martyrs was getting an American remake, people were skeptical(and rightly so), but some were also afraid that Inside was also getting the remake treatment.  Well, it did, and…..it’s a shadow of the what the original film was.

Inside follows Sarah Clark, an expectant mother whose husband was killed in a brutal car crash months prior.  Still reeling from the tragedy, Sarah lives alone with her dog when a mysterious woman knocks on her front door.  Sarah turns the woman away and goes back to bed only to discover that the woman has broken into her house and is attempting to steal her unborn child.  A cat-and-mouse battle for survival begins as Sarah tries to protect the one thing that matters most.  It’s a simple set-up for a horror movie so it doesn’t really require a lot of thought.  Simplicity is a good thing in a lot of horror movies.  What makes Inside’s story so interesting, both in the remake and the original film, is that things like this have actually happened.  I would imagine this scenario would be a living nightmare for an expectant mother as it would be for any family.  The problem with the story in THIS version of the film is that certain elements were changed or removed entirely to accommodate delicate American sensibilities.  The final act of the film in particular takes a far more conventional and predictable approach to the story’s conclusion and as a result, it feels less impactful than the original French film.  This version’s story isn’t the only thing that makes it an inferior film, though.

I’m just going to say it:  The new Inside is extremely tame in terms of its violence.  Make no mistake, it’s still pretty violent with some stabbings and shootings, but it still feels very restrained.  The original film really let the blood flow.  In fact, the gore in the original film was medically accurate(as far as I know), so it had that extremely visceral punch that this movie doesn’t have.  There’s a reason why some of these French horror flicks have earned the label “extreme.”  They pull absolutely no punches in terms of violence and brutality.  They also didn’t shy away from nihilistic endings or situations, and that’s what made those films so damned interesting.  Easy to sit, through?  No, but at least the French had the balls to go all the way with what they were intending, and that illustrates one of the key differences between American and French film-makers.  French film-makers actually trust their audiences to be able to handle the stuff that’s being thrown at them.  American film-makers?  They’re constantly treating us with kids’ gloves, even though our audiences are more than capable of handling some extreme material.  Part of what made the original Inside so memorable was its level of violence, but this new one feels very conventional in that regard and that’s not really a good thing.  What the film does have going for it, though, is intensity.  Even if you know what’s coming, it’s still got you on the edge of your seat and that’s not a bad thing.

The performances here are actually pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.  Rachel Nichols plays the pregnant Sarah, and she absolutely goes for it, despite the absurdity of the final act.  She’s fantastic as a pregnant woman that’s not only fighting her life, but that of her unborn child, even when she’s having contractions and is about to go into labor.  It’s insane, but it was still handled better in the original picture.  Laura Herring plays The Woman.  Her performance is very different from that Beatrice Dalle, who played the character in the previous film.  Instead of going completely psychotic, Herring tones it down quite a bit for this film, and while I don’t think it works as well, she’s still an intimidating presence.  While the main leads are convincing, no one else is.  The writing of these side characters is ludicrously stupid.  I mean, the cops that show up do the stupidest damn things that I’ve seen fictional cops do.  You may as well have stuck a piece of paper on their backs saying, “Keystone.”

If you’re not in the mood for over-top brutality and gore, then you might actually find some enjoyment here.  Myself, I enjoyed it a bit, but I just couldn’t shake the fact that a superior version of the film exists.  This reminds me a lot of the American remake of Martyrs:  A watered-down and more sanitized version of a film that was designed to shock and provoke.  As it stands, the new Inside is nothing more than your average conventional thriller, and while it isn’t a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, it just doesn’t hold a candle to the French version.  It just seems to me that American film-makers just aren’t understanding why these French horror flicks are so memorable.  It’s either that, or they don’t want to offend people’s sensibilities.  Grab a pair, will ya?  Trust your audience to handle the material.  Will they all handle it well?  No, but more often than not, you’re going to find that audiences tend to be a bit more receptive when they aren’t being treated like children.

My Final Recommendation: Sacrebleu!  Another inferior American re-make! 6/10

In an age where movie sequels and remakes basically rule the box-office, we’ve been seeing a number of sequels being made to film franchises that have been around for decades.  Whether its Star Wars, Terminator, or Alien, unexpected sequels are being made for franchises that really didn’t need them.  Don’t misunderstand, I’m grateful that some of these sequels exist, but at the same time, there are times when it feels like it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense making a follow-up film to a series that we thought had closure way back in the day.  I know that film-makers are trying to cash in on nostalgia, and while I appreciate that on a certain level, nostalgia cannot be a main reason for making a sequel years, even decades after the previous film.  I’ve gone on record with my opinions about remakes and sequels ad nauseum, so I won’t blather on about how I feel about sequels.  Instead, I’m going to be taking a look at film franchises that have grown very long in the tooth and need to be put to rest, at least for the time being until film-makers can actually justify bringing these films back from the dead.

Terminator

I’m going to start with the most recent release: Terminator.  Terminator: Dark Fate was released last Friday, November 1st to mixed reviews.  Some people really enjoyed it, some people absolutely hated it, and both sides have valid reasons.  Myself, I rather enjoyed Dark Fate a bit.  That being said, the one thing that everybody can agree on, is that Dark Fate still falls extremely short of the standard that the original two films set.  Why?  I believe it was James Cameron’s lack of direct involvement, in my opinion.  Granted, the man is really busy with his Avatar sequels, but he did step into the writing and producing roles for this film.  Unfortunately, people aren’t going to see it because a lot of them are huge Terminator fans and what they see is nothing more than a re-hash of superior of films, and that is true.  As a result, Dark Fate has only brought in 29 million dollars domestically 94 million dollars internationally.  The total comes in at a lot less than the 185 million bucks that it cost to make the movie.  In other words:  Terminator: Dark Fate bombed.  Big time.  I don’t think it was just the SJW angle the film had, even though that was it, but I think it was more along the lines of franchise fatigue.  The previous three films failed to rejuvenate a franchise that by all rights, should have ended with Terminator 2.  Two of those films were intended to jump start new trilogies, but they failed to get off the ground, so we have another attempt at restarting the franchise, but it looks like the film series has stalled.  It just goes to prove that even though James Cameron has his name on a movie, it doesn’t always guarantee success.

Rambo

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a huge fan of the Rambo films, even though the second and third films got really freakin’ cheesy.  The original film is an absolute classic in every sense of the word, but that’s because the film was more than just an action film, it was a character study into how a Vietnam veteran is treated by everybody else and his response to that kind of treatment.  The 4th film, took on a more real-world scenario dealing with Burma and the atrocities that were happening there.  It was still a Rambo film, though, so it had over-the-top action and violence.  Given how the 4th film ended with the character coming home to his father’s farm in Arizona, most people would’ve expected that to be the end of it.  Nope.  Apparently, Sylvester Stallone had at least one more film in him before hanging up the knife.  Now, we have Rambo: Last Blood.  While I thought the film was an absolute blast, the story and the writing here were paper-thin.  I liked the interaction’s between Stallone’s Rambo and Yvette Monreal’s Gabrielle, but considering what ultimately happens to Gabby half-way through the film, I thought I would have cared a lot more about the characters than I did.  While most audiences really dug the film, and I did too, Last Blood feels very tacked on with some really weak villains.  I honestly don’t think it really needed to be made, since there was really nothing to say.  It seems that Last Blood was intended to be Rambo’s last ride, and I hope it is.  It was a film that nobody really asked for and the box office numbers are a testament to that.  Last Blood wasn’t a complete bomb, but it wasn’t a success, either.

Star Wars

I can’t believe that I’m putting Star Wars on this list, but I am.  I grew up watching Star Wars.  It is one of my favorite film series of all time, which is why I want Disney to take a long hard look at what they intend to do with Star Wars after Episode IX.  There are a lot of stories to be told in the Star Wars universe, and we’ve got The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan series to prove that.  I enjoyed the hell out of The Last Jedi and to a much lesser extent, the Han Solo film, but a lot of people didn’t.  In fact, Solo’s box-office performance was so underwhelming that it forced Disney to re-adjust how they handle the franchise.  Certain projects were cancelled and some film-makers were either forced or chose to move on to other projects.  Recently, the Game of Thrones writers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, who were contracted to create their own Star Wars trilogy, left the project to pursue projects that were being produced by Netflix.  The stranglehold that Disney has on Star Wars is unbelievable.  Considering people’s reactions to Solo and The Last Jedi, I would’ve thought that Disney would have learned to be a bit more respectful to the series.  I still plan on seeing The Rise of Skywalker next month, if only to close out the Skywalker saga.  Honestly, I think Disney needs to give the Star Wars films a rest.  They’ve been going hard with yearly releases and that hasn’t helped the franchise one bit.  Again, we’re starting to see audiences suffer from some fatigue when it comes to Star Wars.  I know I am, and I’m far more forgiving than your average fan.

Predator

The original Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of my favorite 80s action/sci-fi flicks.  It’s a simple popcorn film that hits all the right notes.  It starts off as your typical Commando-style film, but evolves into a seriously slasher-like/horror film that features one of the most iconic movie monsters of all time.  The second film, while not as good as the original, still managed to be quite entertaining.  The third film which brings more characters to a different planet, was still a pretty good time, despite issues with casting and some of the CGI effects.  The fourth film, The Predator is everything that is wrong with this franchise, and it was directed by Shane Black, who starred in the original film.  I would’ve expected him to kind of adhere to the relative seriousness of the first movie, even though it had its comedic moments.  Instead, the movie we got last year was a laugh-a-minute CGI-fest whose jokes rarely landed.  From what I understand, there was a lot of interference from the studio to the point where the final act of the film had to be re-written and re-shot, so the movie that were somewhat promised wasn’t the one we got.  I didn’t hate the film completely, but it was definitely the worst of the bunch.  Now that Fox is owned by Disney, MAYBE we’ll get a decent movie, but I’m willing to wait until they get somebody that will actually respect the franchise.

Tremors

Tremors is absolutely one of my favorite monster movies of all time.  Not only was it scary at times, it was also hilarious.  The blending of horror and comedy was so perfect that the film became an instant cult classic.  It was very reminiscent of the creature features of the 1950s.  Nobody expected a sequel, because they thought it was going to be a one-and-done kind of film.  Now, 29 years later, we got an announcement that for a SEVENTH film, Tremors: Island Fury.  I’m not going to lie, I really enjoyed the sequels(all of which were direct-to-video, by the way), and there is definitely an audience for more films.  That being said, how many more different ways can Burt Gummer blast the bejeezus out of them Graboids?  Michael Gross is fantastic in ALL of those movies, by the way, and he’s really the reason why I keep watching them, but I just want them to stop for a while.  I’m also still pissed off that the latest Tremors series starring Kevin Bacon was cancelled before the first episode even aired.  Fuck you, SyFy.

Saw

The original Saw is one of the most unique thrillers that I’ve ever seen.  This low-budget flick took place mostly inside one room with two people  chained at opposite sides of the room.  The tension comes from not knowing why they are there and how they can escape.  It is a smartly written and well-directed little chiller that didn’t rely on the over-the-top gore that the series would ultimately be known for.  It was still violent, but the extreme gore was mostly off-screen.  Unfortunately, the yearly series would progressively get more violent and gory as each film was released.  Not only that, each subsequent film after the third would try to connect to the original film in some pretty outlandish and unbelievable ways.  These movies just got really freaking ridiculous.  From what I understand, comedian Chris Rock is going to be writing and producing a new Saw film that’s apparently going to reboot the series.  Why?  I’m a huge fan of the horror genre, but I honestly wish that these film-makers would take a risk on a new idea instead of trying to re-hash something that came before.  After Saw VII came and went, I was kind of glad they left the series behind, at least until Jigsaw came out a couple of years ago.

I didn’t create this list to hate on these movies, far from it.  I actually really like a lot of these movies, but I’m looking at how the quality of writing for some of these films are getting worse and worse with each title.  Will film-makers stop making sequels because I asked them to?  Not a chance in hell, but that’s not going to stop me from pointing out the fact that people are not necessarily getting excited about sequels anymore.  I know I’m getting a little sick of them.  But what do you folks think?  Do you agree that some of these franchises need to hit the brakes for a little while, or are you okay with them cranking out more and more titles?  Let me know in the comments.

Released: November 2019

Director: Tim Miller

Rated R

Run Time: 128 Minutes

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Action/Science Fiction

Cast:
Linda Hamilton: Sarah Connor
Arnold Schwarzenegger: T-800/Carl
Mackenzie Davis: Grace
Natalia Reyes: Dani Ramos
Gabriel Luna: Gabriel/Rev-9

For a movie buff, these are interesting times we live in.  We’ve got franchises that date back over 40 years that are still seeing new entries.  Star Wars is coming up on 11 movies with Episode IX being released next month.  The Alien franchise has about 8 movies to its name, if you include the Alien Vs. Predator films(I do, by the way).  Rambo just had a new film back in September, and Ghostbusters is getting an official sequel to the original two films.  So, why are we now seeing sequels to certain franchises that have been around for decades?  Hard to say, but I’m guessing that film-makers want to take these older franchises and hand them off to a new generation of film-goers and film-makers.  Understandable, if sometimes ill-advised.  The Terminator franchise is among my favorite franchises in science fiction.  The original two films set a standard for the genre that is very difficult to beat.  Terminator 2 itself set a high bar for what a sequel should and can be.  Sadly, the franchise has been in a bit of a downward spiral over the past 20 years.  Now, we have a new entry:  Terminator: Dark Fate.  Is this film a worthy follow-up, or is it just another generic action film in an ailing franchise?

Terminator: Dark Fate opens in 1998 as Sarah Connor and her son, John, are enjoying an afternoon at a beach in Mexico, when they come under attack from a T-800 model Terminator.  22 years later, a strange woman falls out of a mysterious blue orb of energy that appears over a free-way.  The woman’s name is Grace, and she’s arrived to protect young Dani Ramos, who is supposed to be the new leader of the human resistance in the future.  At the same time, another orb appears and out drops a new vicious breed of Terminator, the Rev-9.  Dani Ramos and her brother are attacked at a factory by the new machine when Grace intervenes and tries to rescue Dani.  Escaping the Rev-9, they encounter Sarah Connor, who has been hunting Terminators for the past two decades.  Is any of this sounding familiar?  If you’ve seen the original two films, then you know exactly where this is going.  It’s the same kind of story that’s been told in previous films.  Exact same kind of story with almost the exact same kind of resolution.  I’m not saying that it’s bad, it’s just that they really didn’t take any risks outside of the opening sequence.  Even then, it was kind of….eh.  Instead of Skynet, they are fighting Legion.  From a story-telling standpoint, Dark Fate is not quite the Terminator film that I was anticipating, and many hardcore fans of the franchise weren’t.   This is a Terminator for the next generation.  It really is, and I have no problems with it.  It does skip over the previous three films, so that’s a plus.  I’m curious as to where they are going to go with it.

One of the reasons why I was interested in seeing this movie was the fact that Linda Hamilton came back as Sarah Connor.  She was absolutely fantastic.  She owns the character and knows her better than anybody else.  Her reactions to everything going on around her is exactly the kind of thing that would expect from the character.  She’s still the bad-ass that she was in Terminator 2, even she is older.  She’s still got it.  Arnold Schwarzenegger puts in his best performance in a Terminator film.  His character arc is actually VERY interesting.  How his character of Carl has evolved since the beginning of the film is actually pretty nifty.  The new characters are also fairly interesting.  Mackenzie Davis plays Grace, an augmented human from 2042.  Her character is super strong and fast, but it comes at a cost of her metabolism exhausting her after extreme bursts of energy.  She’s great.  Not only can she handle the action sequences extremely well, but her character has more depth to her than the film trailers would have you believe.  Natalia Reyes plays Dani Ramos, the young girl that Grace was sent to protect.  Dani is this film’s John Connor, or rather the role that John Connor was supposed to be.  I think Natalia did pretty well with what she was given, but what she was given wasn’t that great.  She can handle her own amongst the other characters in the film, but she feels kind of average as a character.  Gabriel Luna plays the new Terminator, the Rev-9.  He was fine, but when stacked up to somebody like Robert Patrick from T2, he just doesn’t feel as threatening.  Overall, the acting is pretty good across the board with Linda and Arnold being the obvious standouts.

I have to admit, that I actually really like the new Rev-9 Terminator.  I had my issues with Gabriel Luna not coming across as really threatening in his performance, but the character is definitely not something you want to tangle with.  The Rev-9 is not just the endo-skeletion, but it also has this new liquid-metal covering that operates as a separate entity, which means double trouble for our characters.  It borrows some elements from the first Terminator 3, but it’s still its own thing.  It looks fantastic as far as the actual machine goes.  Some of the CGI work is actually rather impressive, if not groundbreaking.  In fact, there’s nothing truly groundbreaking about what this film is doing.  It doesn’t really push new technology as far as visual effects are concerned, and in fact, a lot of the action sequences in the film are CGI-heavy.  Honestly, I don’t think they could’ve done those scenes without CGI, at least not safely, but some of that CGI-work is pretty shoddy.  The action sequences are very thrilling and you can see what’s going on, but some of the CGI feels unfinished.  I also don’t think there’s an action sequence that comes across as iconic like in the original two films.  In the second film, you had a lot of really cool action set-pieces that stood out from anything that you’ve seen before, such as Arnold shooting the frozen T-1000 into a million pieces.  There’s nothing like that here, and that’s a shame.

Is Terminator: Dark Fate better than the previous three films?  Yeah, but like a lot of people have said, the bar those films set was so low, that the only direction that Dark Fate could was up.  The question you should be asking is this:  Is Dark Fate a worthy sequel to Terminator 2?  Hard to say.  It’s going to be up to you, the audience, to figure that one out for yourself.  A lot of people have compared this film to The Force Awakens, and I’m not really seeing the comparison.  In fact, I don’t think that is a proper comparison.  If you’re going to compare films, than you need to compare Dark Fate with Alien 3.  It’s not a bad movie, far from it, but it does things that’s going to piss off a lot of fans.  The opening sequence to Dark Fate is one of those things that people are not going to be happy about.  I’m a very forgiving fan when it comes to movies, so it’s because of that quality that I can recommend people to check out Terminator: Dark Fate, but I can also understand people who prefer the original two films over everything else that’s been released.  So do I, but I’m not dismissing any the previous films entirely, because each film has its own strengths.  Dark Fate, I think, is absolutely worth watching, if only for Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Everything else is icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned.  I like the new female characters.  They are mostly well-written and strongly performed, and we have a vicious Terminator that really does seem indestructible.  So, yeah, Dark Fate was a lot better than I was expecting it to be, but it’s far from great.  It’s definitely got some issues that bring it down a couple of notches, but I would say definitely check it out in theaters.

My Final Recommendation: There is no fate but what we make for ourselves, except when you’re making Terminator movies. 8/10.

Released: July 2019

Director: Alexandre Aja

Rated R

Run Time: 87 Minutes

Distributor: Paramount Picture

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Cast:
Kaya Scodelario: Haley
Barry Pepper: Dave
Morfydd Clark: Beth
Ross Anderson: Wayne
Jose Palma: Pete

In the genre of horror, there are many different sub-genres.  We have slasher movies, torture movies, rape/revenge thrillers, and the supernatural.  Horror is also one of the most flexible and adaptive genres in film, despite what many people would think.  You can have horror comedies like Ghostbusters and Army of Darkness while still having full-on horror flicks like The Descent, Final Destination, and Wishmaster.  There is one sub-genre in horror that I’ve loved since I was a kid:  The creature-feature.  It is a tried-and-true form of horror that goes all the way back to the 50s with films like Tarantula, Them!, The Blob, and It Came From Beneath The Sea.  These are regarded as classics within the genre, and rightly so.  Over the course of the 70s and 80s, we began to see more films like Jaws, Leviathan, Deep Star Six, Piranha, and many others.  One of my favorite all-time creature features was Tremors from 1990.  It was scary, funny, and it did everything right.  There are a lot of films in this particular field that are really good, like the ones that I just mentioned, and it’s also loaded with some really awful movies like Sharknado.  Well, this summer, we ended up getting a new creature feature that despite decent reviews, got pushed to the side:  Crawl.

Crawl begins as professional swimmer Haley gets a call from her sister, saying that she hasn’t heard from their dad, David.  Haley decides to go check on her father because of this.  Meanwhile, the town is about to be hit by a Category 5 hurricane.  She finds her father in a crawlspace beneath their old house, but they aren’t alone.  They are hunted by a couple of bloodthirsty alligators, so they have to fight to survive not just the storm, but the savage beasts themselves.  That’s it.  There is absolutely nothing more to the story than that, and you know what?  That’s just fine.  You don’t corrupt business or military to create tension in a film.  All you need is an environment that is as threatening as the creatures themselves.  The entirety of the film is set beneath a house during a massive hurricane that brings the attention of some really hungry gators.  Is it realistic?  Not particularly, but the film isn’t trying to be super-realistic.  If you’re looking for a monster movie that’s realistic and has some message about the nature of humanity, move along.  You’re not finding that here.  Again, that’s a good thing.  The film trims most of the unnecessary fat but keeps the bits that make these movies worth watching in the first place.  In fact, the end credits of the film start at the 83-84 minute mark, so the movie doesn’t have time to get bogged down with pointless bullshit.  There are some elements of characterization here and there, but they are superficial at best.  Don’t come for the story.  There’s really nothing there.

In Crawl, our main characters have to fend off not just alligators, but they have to survive a massive storm as well, so this movie is a bit of a mish-mash of genres as it were.  It’s a disaster/horror/thriller all rolled into one.  Haley and David, our main characters, aren’t the best written characters, but they come across as pretty likable people.  I actually dig the semi-antagonistic relationship that Haley has with her father, David.  To me it lends a bit of humanity to the goings-on that actually makes the audience care more about these two characters.  All the other folks in the movie are strictly gator-bait.  The acting is really good here with Kaya Scodelario playing Haley and Barry Pepper as David.  Kaya was a good pick for this role as she gives the character a tough, never-back-down quality that another actress may not have been able to convey.  She’s absolutely fantastic.  Barry Pepper is also an amazing actor and his performance here is spot-on.  Again, the characters aren’t that deep, but the actors give them enough to make them very relatable.  Of course, you have to have a token pet to keep from becoming gator food.

If you learn anything about Crawl’s director, Alexandre Aja, it’s this:  Aja’s films have a tendency to be extremely violent and bloody.  They’re violent, but not without purpose.  That kind of makes Crawl a bit of an anomaly.  The film is definitely bloody and violent at times, it’s just not to the same degree as Aja’s previous films.  It’s pretty restrained in that regard.  Don’t get me wrong, though, when the carnage does hit, it’s brutal.  People are literally torn to pieces here.  It’s creature violence, so it doesn’t necessarily carry the same kind of brutality as human-0n-human violence.  The gators in this film are not of the mutated or weaponized variety.  They’re  hyper-realistic and exaggerated in their behavior, but they’re still just animals, so you really can’t hate them for what they do.  One thing you should know going into this film, is that the alligators are completely CGI.  Normally, I’d bitch and moan about fully digitized creatures in movies these days, but the gators are really well done.  They’re extremely detailed, right down to the scale.  Yeah, their movements are extremely exaggerated, but the idea is to make the situation that much more intense.  It really works.  Some of the more gory moments do utilize practical effects and I absolutely appreciate that.  Not only that, the storm effects are absolutely incredible.  As I mentioned before, realism isn’t a factor here.  A category 5 hurricane does a hell of a lot more damage than what you see in Crawl.  Still, it makes for an exciting and thrilling sequence of events that just don’t let up.

Crawl is a film that doesn’t do more than what it sets out to do.  It doesn’t waste time with interpersonal relationships(mostly) or some kind of grand revelation about the world.  No, Crawl is about simple a film as you can get.  It’s more about thrilling it’s audience with intense sequences of scares and gory moments.  In that regard, the film absolutely nails it out of the park.  It’s definitely one of the best creature features that I’ve seen in a long time.  I don’t think it’s as good as 1980’s Alligator, but it’s definitely a good movie in its own right.  In fact, I think Crawl is to Alligator as The Shallows is to Jaws.  They’re not better, but they are worthy entries into a sub-genre that’s seen a lot of crap over the years.  It’s really amazing to see a film like this that is so unpretentious and honest about what it wants to deliver.  I really can’t think of many downsides to the film aside from people doing some stupid things in the film, but that’s standard for movies like this.  It’s a hell of a good time, and it’s a shame that it really didn’t get the attention it deserved.

My Final Recommendation:  See you later, alligator.  9/10