Crawl (2019)

Director: Alexandre Aja

Starring: Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Ross Anderson, Anson Boon, Jose Palma, Morfydd Clark

Running Time: 87 min.

Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

Anyone familiar with that memorably hilarious and gasp-inducing scene in 1997's Anaconda when Jon Voight's certifiable snake hunter Paul Serone is eaten whole before his winking corpse is regurgitated might soon get flashbacks. It's a spectacular moment in a less-than-amazing, but ridiculously fun film that's best enjoyed in the presence of a game audience in a packed theater. And it's hard not to think of it while watching horror maestro Alexandre Aja's Crawl and assume it had to be somewhere in the back of the director's mind as he crafted a horror disaster entry many assumed would veer closer to Sharknado, but with killer crocs. Instead, it is still somewhat funny and ridiculous, but in the best way possible, and also much better made than those aforementioned titles it seemed destined to resemble in quality. Quentin Tarantino going so far as to name this his favorite film of 2019 might come as a surprise to no one given his eclectic tastes, but he's on to something in that genre movies this well executed are too frequently dismissed out of hand on their premise alone. While I wouldn't rank it nearly that high (or maybe even at all), it's at least easier to appreciate that praise when final product does undeniably deliver a good time. 

After a disappointing practice, University of Florida swimmer Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario) gets a call from her older sister Beth (Morfydd Clark) from Boston warning her that Category 5 Hurricane Wendy is about to make landfall in Florida and that she should evacuate. But when it occurs to Haley that she should check on her estranged father, Dave (Barry Pepper), she discovers he isn't at his condo, but their old Coral Lake family home she thought he sold when her parents divorced. After deceiving a police officer Beth used to date, she's able to get into the quickly flooding area to find him unconscious and trapped in the crawl space under the house, seriously injured from an alligator attack.

While attempting to drag her dad out, Haley realizes they have more company than anticipated, as multiple alligators have managed to sneak through the storm drain and have them trapped. With a rapidly intensifying storm and flood waters rising, Haley and Dave must fight injury and hungry gators to swim out of the basement to safety. But what's waiting for them outside isn't much of an improvement.

At first glance, it may not be obvious just how effective a thriller this is because so many like it are dumped into theaters each week before disappearing, often justifiably. If the set-up doesn't inspire confidence that we're in for something dramatically different, that's mostly because we're not. And that's okay since Michael and Shawn Rasmussen's straightforward script leaves so little room for missteps, allowing enough leeway for Aja to do what he's done "best" in some of his previous horror entries, frequently to the point of overkill. Usually, dabbling in more mainstream, accessible fare like this would seem to be the kiss of death for a director  synonymous with the disparaging "torture porn" label, but this time around he's considerably more focused on ratcheting up the tension. 

If alligators dining on humans is a major component, the survival story still takes center stage, with some of the best scenes and sequences revolving around this father-daughter tandem putting their heads together while working on their own personal baggage. The gator attack scenes are spectacular, as Aja takes a page out of the Spielberg playbook in resisting the temptation to overexpose them, making their well-timed appearances count. Doing a superior job to most in avoiding to break the rules of the world he's created, the CGI gators aren't some kind of hybrid reptilian mutants gifted with incredible speed, but instead moving how real ones would, and unexpectedly faster if necessary. This leads to many exciting scenes with Haley trying to outswim them as the always underrated Barry Pepper fights for his daughter and powers through the pain to concoct a plan.

Most recently seen as a bi-polar figure skater in Netflix's unfairly cancelled Spinning Out, Kaya Scodelario again makes you wonder how she isn't already a major star, physically and emotionally putting herself through the ringer as an athlete whose grit and credibility ground even the most questionable circumstances in a harsh reality. It's also easy to endorse a thriller that seems so invested in the fate of a dog, with hardly a moment going by where we're not at least made aware of the female terrier's whereabouts. I fully expected to only see the pet once or twice before they decided audiences just wouldn't care or think to remember, only to be thankfully proven wrong.

A young woman trying to save her father from alligators invading a basement during a hurricane explains all that's necessary in determining whether you're up for the ride. And yet that doesn't quite do Crawl justice. For what it is, it's kind of perfect. Strong, resourceful characters, a tight, no-nonsense script, a brisk running time and an impressive lead performance equals escapism done well. With a knowing, self-referential wink, it channels the spirit those cheesy 90's adventure thrillers while successfully managing to top more than a few of them. 

7500

Director: Patrick Vollrath
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Omid Memar, Aylin Tezel, Carlo Kitzlinger, Murathan Muslu, Aurélie Thépaut, Paul Wollin
Runing Time: 92 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★)
 
After a four year hiatus, Joseph Gordon-Levitt returns to the screen in Amazon Studios' self-contained hijacking thriller, 7500, a well put together, highly competent action excursion made in a similar vein to United 93. Putting on no false pretenses, writer and first-time feature director Patrick Vollrath makes it clear early he's under no illusions that this will in any way be a mainstream air disaster movie meant to "entertain" audiences with fantastic shootouts, incredible CGI, or villains being sucked into a plane's engine. We already have Liam Neeson movies for that. In his feature directorial debut, Vollrath instead gains points for both honesty and consistency, entering a pact to show a methodical, almost documentary-like account of every pilot and passenger's worst nightmare, without violating common sense. That's harder than it seems, and some more impatient viewers probably won't be along for the ride, which is a shame since the exceptionally tight screenplay builds to a sort of claustrophobic chaos that recalls other single location exercises like Phone Booth, Buried, Frozen and ATM. But mostly to its advantage, this takes itself a little more seriously.

You may as well title this, Cockpit, as all the action that takes place over its running time occurs within that constricted location, with a co-pilot suddenly forced to make life or death decisions when trapped in worst case scenario. There's initially a low-key rythem to the proceedings, but once the inciting event occurs and the focus shifts to JGL having to pull off a fairly challenging role with intelligence and believability, it becomes a pressure cooker. It isn't necessarily full of twists or turns, but is instead a well-paced, efficiently made pot boiler that makes logical sense, proving to be the ideal comeback vehicle for its star, while hopefully serving as a warm-up for another upcoming round of great performances in higher profile projects for him. Due to his work and a tight script, it all comes together surprisingly well, making for a tense 91 minutes.

Co-pilot Tobias Ellis (Gordon-Levitt) is preparing to embark on a flight from Berlin to Paris with pilot Captain Michael Lutzmann (Carlo Kitzinger), with both exchanging pleasantries while doing their checks before take-off. Tobias' girlfriend, Gökce (Aylin Tezel) is one of the flight attendants on board, as well as the mother of their son, and after a brief debate about which school he should attend, they're airborne. Once in flight, the cockpit is infiltrated by terrorist hijackers, who stab Lutzmann to death, while seriously injuring Tobias, who manages to fight them off long enough to lock two out of the cockpit while tying up their unconcious partner in the jumpseat.

After unsuccessfully attempting to revive the pilot as the terrorists bang violently on the cockpit door to get in, Tobias gets in touch with ground control, who inform him he'll need to make an emergency landing and warn not open that door for any reason, even as the hijackers threaten to execute hostages if he doesn't. With the PA system serving as his only conduit to the cabin, he must instruct the passengers while negotiating for their lives with the youngest terrorist, Vedat (Omid Memar), with whom he begins to form a connection. But they want control of the plane, and will stop at nothing to insure Tobias doesn't safely land it. 

The opening close circuit airport footage of the suspicious men who will eventually be revealed as the hijackers announces right up front the kind of film Vollrath intends to make. And he mostly does just that, emphasizing the real-life stakes of the situation with a real-time, stripped down approach free of the usual bells and whistles you'd find in a cheesy thriller. It's much appreciated, especially when dealing with the early interplay between Tobias and Lutzmann, who both seem like friendly, competent pilots who respectfully converse like normal professionals, their focus remaining entirely on getting to their destination. No one's drunk, popping pills, having an affair, going through a divorce, or secretly working with the terrorists, as we've come to expect from action scripts of this sort. With just enough to summise these are decent, hard-working men with families and no more, the hijacking feels even more like like a genuine interruption of their everyday lives, without any other plot device getting in the way of the trauma at hand. And other than fleeting glimpses on the cockpit's monitor, we don't actually see the passengers or cabin, conveying the attack as more immediate and personal for the pilots.

For a while it feels very real, especially when Tobias has to make some serious ethical decisions when the lives of the passengers and flight crew are threatened. Of course, his girlfriend is one of them, and when she's inevitably introduced into the equation the movie starts to go a little more over-the-top. But JGL keeps it grounded as an everyman who's understandably overwhelmed and scared, but clearly determined to do the right thing to get everyone out of this. He rarely wavers on exactly what that is, while remaining flexible enough to make adjustments to that game plan along the way. Everything taking place within only a few feet of space only serves to heighten the claustrophobia within the cockpit as it becomes clear that, despite the many lives in peril, it all rides on Tobias' actions and reactions. 

While movie's synopsis heavily emphasizes the commonalities Tobias discovers he shares with one of his hijackers, it's at best an overstated aspect of the story and at worst a cautious, preemptive apology for depicting foreign terrorists. It's almost as if out of guilt, Vollrath attempt to elicit an enormous amount of sympathy for one of them. He's well-played by Omid Memar in an appropriately panicked performance that adds a lot of juice to the third act as he battles his conscience and fear, but a transparent attempt at trying to show that terrorists are "just like us" is beneath a film as smart as this. That and that old trick of convincing the hijacker they're refueling the plane for their escape are about the only reminders of a popcorn-style crowd pleaser.

So steeped in his commitment to docu-style realism, we don't put it past Vollrath to kill off his protagonist, whom Gordon-Levitt plays with enough desperation and single-minded focus to sell the idea of him saving the lives of these passengers at the expense of his own. But the presentation of the young, frightened hijacker does pretty much foreshadow an ending that occurs exactly how and where it should, heightening the feeling that what we're watching takes place in real time. There's a sense of relief and satisfaction for viewers when that door finally opens, and what could have easily been another routine action entry overperforms, providing a solid template for how this kind of thriller can be executed under the most disciplined of circumstances.