If you ask me about a happy childhood memory involving a movie, I would have to cite Shelley Winters, an older, overweight, sweet woman, in The Poseidon Adventure (1972), a disaster film about people trying to survive a sinking luxury liner, saving the day because she used to be a competitive swimmer. It was a surprise, bad ass twist filled with pathos. While Alligator was less memorable, as a New Yorker, this creature feature evoked urban legend nightmares. Then who can forget memorable natural disaster films like Earthquake or Tornado, which have great special effects and overflowing star power in its ensemble casts.

When I saw the preview for Crawl, it hit all my movie nostalgia buttons with the potential to do a great mash up of creature feature meet natural disaster movie with two people and a dog trapped in their old family home during a hurricane with an alligator. I decided not to see it in theaters because the dog was too much stress. I only put it in my queue after I spoiled myself on Does the Dog Die looking for dog spoilers on the website. I watched it as soon as it was available for home viewing, and I was not into it, but Quentin Tarantino thought it was the best movie of 2019. Maybe you have to be a father to enjoy this movie?

Most disaster films have the goal of reuniting a family, and Crawl dutifully sets up the moving pieces to make it possible. The ingredients are a college age daughter and her estranged father. They used to be close because he raised her to be a competitive swimmer. They are so much alike. What happened? I don’t care. The movie sets up the idea that she was a great swimmer instead of making her an average woman whom it turns out randomly is the best person for the situation. Instead the opening sets her up to be awesome then welp, maybe not. It raises my expectations then crashes them in less than five minutes. Great, I got the anti-Shelley Winters: young, fit and mostly incompetent.

I love a woman protagonist, especially when there is a promise of a certain amount of physicality, but Crawl seemed as ridiculous as Discovery Channel’s Phelps vs. Shark: Great Gold vs. Great White. Nooooooooooooo. I love a certain amount of stupidity in movies otherwise I would not have watched most of the Sharknado franchise, but this film has no sense of humor. There was only one scene that cracked me up, hopefully intentionally, which reminded me of a scene from Don’t Breathe, another film where people are desperate to get out of the house, but just cannot even when they do. Instead it really lays on the sad, suddenly single, divorced dad trope. It is filled with jump scares, the poor man’s way of building up tension, and loses most of its credibility fairly early as the child endeavors to save her parent in the most implausible scenarios ever. How many bites can you survive against an alligator? Watch and find out!

Crawl only has one scene towards the end of the film that felt brilliantly earned when she faces off against the beast and outwits it with an homage to The Shining meets Psycho otherwise all the other scenes strained my suspension of disbelief until it snapped and watching the film became a chore fairly early on. If the relationship was more interesting, maybe I would have been invested, but I came for the B movie, fun qualities, not the acting. A bigger cast that stuck around for more of the movie may have helped flesh out the story, but I felt as if more weight was placed on the creature feature, not the disaster, which mainly acts as a backdrop and a stage that helps speed up the ticking clock against the human beings instead of another formidable antagonist. I am greedy, and I want both.

How was the acting? I usually want more Barry Pepper in my life, but when I saw him in this anticlimactic movie, I was just sad. He is a good actor who clearly has some bills. I loved him in 25th Hour and True Grit (2010). I love him so much that I did not hold Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 against him (nor will I do so in this case). Pepper acts the hell out of this movie and was the embodiment of a father who would willingly sacrifice his life for his daughter and is utterly distraught that she is in this situation. If the film had made him the protagonist without changing the story, it could have worked because then he would have been able to command our attention for most of the mocie, but Pepper is not the star. Kaya Scodelario is.

I rooted for Scodelario on the principle that she is a human being, and I did not want her to be eaten alive, but I was not particularly rooting for her as a character per se. Scodelario was not memorable, and her character seemed to have more confidence in her abilities than she should. Is she mad at her dad for believing his lies that she is allegedly “an apex predator”? The situations wore her, she did not wear the situation. Before Jaimie Lee Curtis, Linda Hamilton or Sigourney Weaver became household names, they had a certain je ne sais quoi that made me instantly root for them—an ability to be the focus of the action when facing an outsized opponent. Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 10 Cloverfield Lane, Marie Avgeropoulos in The 100, Alycia Debnam-Carey in everything, including The 100, have that same quality.

Scodelario does not have it in this movie. Instead of competitive or determined, she seems a bit vacant and brittle. I saw Crawl over a year ago and did not recognize her even though I apparently saw her in Moon, another father daughter movie, but actually masterful. I recently saw her in Skins, and the filmmakers should have never made her a blonde. She would have at least been recognizable as a brunette. No offense to Scodelario, but she plays a better sexy girl with an ephemeral quality that makes guys go wild than a scrappy, believable survivor. She gives it her all, but as Effie in Skins, the girl that everyone wanted, I bought it even if I did not get it. She is not a strong actor, and she is forced to have some sort of an American accent that alternates between neutral and vaguely Southern.

I should have looked closer at the credits. Alexandre Aja directed Crawl, and I hated The Hills Have Eyes remake. Aja seems to enjoy making the kind of movies that attract me, but he cannot stick the landing. Visually he showed a distinctive vision in Horns, which I enjoyed, but other than doing a good job on the special effects, there is no single scene in this film that reflects the same artistry.

Crawl is watchable and streaming on Amazon Prime. If you enjoy the genre and go into it not expecting a lot, then go ahead and watch it, but if you have something better to do, don’t prioritize it.

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I love that the filmmakers clearly agreed that the dog had to live, but I am still mad that the dog was put in danger just to increase tension. It made me hate the characters. The dog was a more compelling character than the protagonist, and if everyone spoke dog, they would have been fine because the dog ALWAYS knew how to steer clear of snapping jaws!

I know that it was supposed to be inspirational, but one minute, Dad is cautioning her that they are faster than she is, which obviously, but then later on, he cheers her and says that she is faster than they are, which she is. Never mind that earlier the alligators plucked a woman out of the same boat, but she is immune because her dad helped her believe in herself. It was not her body, but her mind holding her back? An alligator bit her leg and arm, but now she can swim. GTFOH! I cannot. Call Doggie DCF please, and I expect that all the alligator victims who had to die to save their asses should file a civil suit against them although they have no money. Ugh!