The most surprising thing about CRAWL is it isn’t surprising at all. I usually enjoy killer animal movies and I love disaster movies, so I mistakenly thought that if you combine those two things with the director of the gnarly HIGH TENSION, that CRAWL would be an awesome bloodbath of alligators ripping people to shreds. Flinging intestines and bloody limbs into the air with gleeful abandon. Nope. The cinematography by Maxime Alexandre looks nice, but, outside of that, CRAWL is strictly by-the-numbers. Quick set-up of character backstories, put characters in dangerous situation, have characters scamper around as various side characters run up the low body count, have main characters learn lessons about family.
I remember seeing CRAWL in the theater and being mildly entertained, but disappointed by the final act. I had hoped that once it was released on home media that it would get a longer cut with added brutal violence, but that didn’t happen. It’s just the same old movie. Zero nudity, very little blood, forgettable looking sets that look like sets, unimaginative script, boring cast, disappointing ending.
Overall, CRAWL is watchable and mildly entertaining. I did like the dog though. She was super cute. I loved when she was swimming. Those back legs were kicking! They should make an alien invasion movie, but just make it about the dog from CRAWL and the cat from that boring ass A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE. (Literally, the best minutes of that movie are when the cat ran off by itself.) No human main characters at all, just a cat and a dog’s journey across a Robert McCammon-style post-apocalyptic wasteland. Then they both die at the end.
After many harrowing adventures together, our two heroes are on the side of a hill that overlooks a large dead city. The sky is grey and the clouds low. The cat and dog walk together in silence, breathing out ghosts in the bitter cold. The dog misjudges a step and breaks one of his back legs on a loose rock. Before the dog even falls to the ground, the cat knows that they are doomed. Still, she does what she can to comfort her best friend. She brings him a small mouse to eat and nuzzles him. Then, as night settles and the deeper cold moves in, she cuddles up to him to keep him as warm as her little body can. He dies in the night. She feels his body cool next to her. In the morning, she knows that she is healthy enough to move on. But, she also knows that life is not worth living when one is truly alone.
