Crawl (2019)

Picture this: a pair of six-metre alligators take up residence in the crawl space of a run-down house in Florida, following a Category 5 hurricane.

With the house rapidly flooding, competitive swimmer Haley and her estranged father, Dave, find themselves trapped in the maze of the basement, where every shadow conceals the waiting jaws of a brutal apex predator.

This excellent schlock creature-feature horror with real monsters demands lots of popcorn, the lights off, and feet pulled up on the couch. It’s directed by Alexandre Aja, director of the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards winner The Hills Have Eyes, and produced by the legendary Sam Raimi, who gave us Evil Dead, 30 Days of Night and Spider-Man.

Kaya Scodelario (Teen Choice nominee for Maze Runner’s Teresa and Carina from Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge) and Golden Globe nominee and Emmy winner Barry Pepper (Maze Runner, The Green Mile) co-star as Haley and Dave.

Rotten Tomatoes’s critics consensus call it, “An action-packed creature feature that’s fast, terrifying, and benefits greatly from a completely game Kaya Scodelario.”

“Crawl is a great example of a simple story exceedingly well-told,” says Vulture. “It’s a bloody adventure full of teeth-gnawing turns of fortune, mordant wit, vicious gator kills, and surprising tenderness — that clocks in at a blessedly fleet 87 minutes. It’s a perfect horror film for the summer, as much an ode to the cataclysmic, humbling aspects of Mother Nature as it is a love letter to father-daughter relationships.”