Crawl

Director Alexandre Aja’s (The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D) latest “horror” flick, while over-the-top ridiculous, somehow manages to stay watchable. It sucks you right in and suddenly you forget about how preposterous the plot actually is. Haley (Kaya Scodelario) attempts to save her father during a Category 5 hurricane and finds herself trapped in a flooding house. But here’s where it gets extra-crazy/silly/stupid: she literally has to fight for her life (inside the flooded house) against some mean, big-ass, ravenous alligators! Sounds dumb, right? Actually, the film is quite sharp for just one of those “dumb popcorn movies.” Aside from maybe the dog that we’re all rooting for (we’d hate to see a dog get eaten by gators), Scodelario steals the show in this picture. In the current super-“woke” Hollywood cinematic landscape, Tinseltown keeps shoving all these “women as bad-ass super heroines” roles/movies down our throats, regardless of whether the movie has any solid substance/foundation or not, or if the actress in the lead that’s supposed to be this new perfect archetype can act at all. But Scodelario is refreshing in this lead role. She can act her way out of a paper bag and she’s very bad-assy.

[R]