“Crawl” was directed by Alexandre Ale who also did horror remakes such as 2006’s “The Hill Have Eyes” & 2010’s  “Piranha 3D” as well as 2008’s “Mirrors”. The film stars Kaya Scodelario & Barry Pepper and is produced by acclaimed horror filmmaker, Sam Raimi, who rose to fame with his “Evil Dead” trilogy and “Drag Me To Hell” as well as his other films such as the “Spider Man” trilogy, “The Quick & The Dead” and “Oz: The Great & Powerful”. His production company has produced some of the recent horror and supernatural films or the last decade like “Don’t Breathe”, “30 Days of Night”, “The Messengers” & the 2 “Grudge” films, even the 2013 remake of Raimi’s “Evil Dead”.

As a hurricane is headed towards the state of Florida, a college swimmer, Haley (Scodelario) gets a call from her sister that her father (Pepper) isn’t responding to anyone’s calls. Haley decides to go and check on him despite the entire city evacuating. Once Haley arrives at her father’s home, he uncovers the horrifying truth. Her father is wounded and trapped in the basement with vicious alligators. Now both are trapped but not only are they trapped with gators in the basement, but as the weather begins to get worse, the basement slowly begins to flood. Haley and her father must race against time, the weather and a pack of monstrous alligators.

Its not very often that a horror films are based on a simple idea and then executed just as simply. “Jaws” & “Alien” are prime examples. “Crawl” is no different. Now, I’m not saying that this movie was good as the ones I mentioned but it was very entertaining and greatly executed based on this very simple idea. The performances from Scodelario and Pepper are very compelling and really carry the movie. The tension is built as well the great sense of danger and peril. Where the film faults is the predictable storyline and cliches that come with any disaster movie. Despite seeing the inevitable ending, it still was an entertaining journey getting there.

Overall, this was a great and entertaining film that had minor setbacks but still told interesting story. While this wasn’t Sam Raimi’s best, it was stands as one of his most unique yet simple.