The Giant-Alligator movie is a return to a simpler time.



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A woman shines a flashlight in the dark water.

Kaya Scodelario stars in Crawl.

Paramount Pictures

The film season has been disappointing. We are now halfway to the summer movie season, and even though it has had its best moments, it seems like we are remembered as an unforgettable year, a year characterized by disappointment and fatigue. franchise. If we mark his sending blow with Avengers: End of the game (Back at the end of April), it was a summer in which Marvel, Pixar and John Wick remained safe, but other brands took on a sour connotation. No matter who for more X-Men movies after Dark Phoenix? Want to another Tree? Delighted to discover that men in black, not only the aliens of the police on Earth, but also to have offices in Europe? If the summer of 2019 has a signature film, it's Godzilla: the king of monsters, which featured giant monsters, world stakes and images of a large American city in ruins. Yet, less than two months after its release, who remembers? Sometimes operating at maximum volume simply means making a lot of noise. This also opens the possibility for other people to be heard once the noise has gone down.

Let's move this forward: Crawl, which opposes a student and her father to a group of alligators as a hurricane approaches their family's home in Florida, is not a good movie, but grandeur is not up to par. It's not even a particularly daring film, at least in its concept. Every summer, there seems to be a niche humanity against animals, filled in recent years The socks (2016) 47 meters lower (2017), and The mega (2018). Directed by Alexandre Aja after a screenplay by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, CrawlThe plot most closely resembles The socks, in which Blake Lively plays a woman forced to use only her spirit to survive against a hungry shark.

Kaya Scodelario plays Haley, a star of the swimming team (this detail will prove unsurprisingly relevant).

CrawlThe virtues remain however formidable: fast, effective, perfectly ordered, it offers the promised shivers of the alligator. In another year, this could be worth a polite nod. This year, however, the values ​​of Film B are particularly refreshing and enlightening. Aja – a French director who broke through with the effective villain High tension and whose American work is going to be a very good remake of The hills Have Eyes entertaining fun Piranha 3D– stay focused on one question: how will our heroes fend off alligators and escape a flooded house quickly? In doing so, it is easier to worry about the fate of two people than other movies do it from the fate of an entire city. (Sorry, Boston, I hope you'll recover soon from Godzilla.)

Dusting subtext does not hurt. Kaya Scodelario plays the role of Haley, a star of the swimming team (this detail will not be surprising), worried for his father, Dave (Barry Pepper), as a hurricane approaches his hometown. On the outs, they have not spoken for a while, but it does not slow down. Disregarding a roadblock, she goes into the storm and finally at home, Dave failed to sell after his divorce from Haley's mother. Haley finds him in the basement, unconscious and missing a piece of flesh from his shoulder, thanks to one of the two alligators installed in their basement. To save his life and repair their relationship, Haley will have to find a way to get him out of the place he can not leave.

And it's essentially the whole movie, the one that does not lose much of its 88-minute movie. There is no spiritual joke, no star in the skin for a marquee value, no image that seems to have been created for an FX demo. Instead of, Crawl keeps the focus on clean and consistent action scenes. Aja establishes the house, the space around her and the elements preventing Haley and her father from escaping, and lets the situation be played against the gloomy lighting of a sky black storm. Even the best of this year's blockbusters could be inspired by Crawl. Spider-Man: far from home, despite all its charms, illuminates the big cities of Europe with the indifference of the selfie and fights to create a memorable action scene.

Summer will always be dominated by the big movies, but that does not mean that the little ones can not show the way. Missing big name stars and a huge budget for special effects, Crawl to make movies and understand what to do and how to do it. There is evidence that our A films could benefit from an infusion of B-movie values, a problem that only John Wick series seems to have taken seriously before now. But maybe the leaded summer of 2019 will mark the point that others are also noticing. Crawl Looks great in just about any season. In this one, it shines positively.

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