The killer-alligator film Crawl is a solid antidote for summer blockbusters

As the border between film and television continues to fade, widescreen movies are still expected to show their scale. In a summer when many potential blockbusters disappear at the box office and where many potential moviegoers seem to stay at home to watch Strange things, size and scale remain sales outlets for the theatrical experience. Avengers: End of the game jumps around planets and streams of time. Men in black: International zips between continents as a picture of James Bond. Even your friendly neighborhood, Spider-Man, takes a European-looking tour.

Some of these large-scale adventures offer the cinematic sensations required. But as a lot of blockbusters become disappointed, another kind of summer movie has come its way. In the dull summer of 2016, The socks (in which a failed Blake Lively combines spirit with a shark) and Do not breathe (in which trapped youth match minds with a cunning and murderous blind man) have provided more effective and coherent sensations than many of their super-big, budget-minded counterparts. Call them thrillers at limited locations. So far this summer, the filming thriller limited to beat is the sub-typed Crawl, in which a Kaya Scodelario blocked by a hurricane combines the spirit with a pack of alligators.

Crawl is not as well designed as The socks or Do not breathe, although he shares a producer with the latter: Sam Raimi, whose first two evil Dead the movies are gonzo versions of the limited thriller. Alexandre Aja, author of hit horror films, knows how to deliver an unpretentious horror action. Crawl is a lot less ironic than his Piranha remake, but it does not shovel and does not deliver dynamite spares.

However, it maintains its tension in a way that surpasses many of the thrilling attractions of this summer's summer. The configuration is an ingenious blend of disaster and creature film: a college student, Haley (Scodelario), goes to her former family home in the middle of a hurricane to make sure her father (Barry Pepper), who has not answered his phone, is secure. She finds him gator bitten and unconscious and, while their house is flooded, she realizes that alligators are flocking with rainwater. The father and the daughter should avoid drowning and massive alligator teeth. much of the film's 87 minutes takes place in the house with rapid floods.

This limitation is a major asset. Crawl has a lot of computer effects, but unlike many movies whose scope exceeds their budget effects (especially in catastrophic circumstances apparently calling for large-scale destruction), it is not necessary that his characters spend all the film in front of green screens in a desperate simulation of the epic reach. The weather effects are obviously computerized, but the house itself is a real whole, flooded with at least a little real water. When Haley ventures into the basement for the first time to find her father, Aja plays mud, dirt and the first signs of gore for what they are worth. Because the decor feels so tactile, the film creates a real atmosphere in a potentially generic context.

Photo: Paramount Pictures

Pleased to explore his small-scale setting, the film never drifts weightlessly as Haley swims, jumps and, yes, crawls through various narrow passages and improvised waterways. When the alligators bite, they feel particularly gifted through practical gore effects, and the stunt creates a more credible athleticism for his character – much more than the stars that need to be replaced by a CGI wire cartoon every time that they are doing something super heroic. Yes Crawl does not have an exceptional centerpiece, it's because everything is happening so quickly and efficiently.

This includes the mandatory emotional background, which is essentially a long version of "gymnastics" prefiguring Malcolm's daughter in The lost World. Haley is a competitive swimmer. (Guess in which case does she specialize?) Her father is her former coach who may have pushed her too much. Of course, an oddly coordinated alligator attack becomes a testing ground for his swimming skills and perhaps even a catalyst for the family's healing. It's just as corny as it sounds, but as The socks, Crawl treats with dignity the mat of his main character, anchored in the hassle free performance of Scodelario lead. It's silly, of course, but the clarity is nice: nothing in this film gives the impression of being rewritten frantically and randomly in the editing room. Alligators pursue a resourceful swimmer; What does it rewrite?

Yet even studios that make movies like Crawl does not always seem to understand the relative blessings they have on their hands. Despite the good reputation of Aja, his film was not widely presented to the press. This seems particularly strange in a week when extremely mixed reviews were given for the so-called show The Lion King jumped all over the internet. This summer in particular, no studio should be ashamed to release an unpretentious and well-paced entertainment like Crawl – and the public should not be ashamed to leave the comfort of their home to check it.