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Mystery/Thriller Crawl

Crawl is currently sitting at 100% on RT

TLK is gonna be huge but the Gators won't go down without a fight!

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Lasirius said:
Early reactions were raving about Pet Sematary but it really wasn't anything close to special.
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Yep Pet Sematary turned out to be extremely bland and forgettable.

A lot of people that go to early screenings just get caught up in the excitement of seeing a film early and it severely skews their reviews of the film. Then they go on twitter and because of the 140 character limit they try to convey their exagerated excitement as succinctly as possible which usually ends up being, "OMG Best film of the year/decade/ever!" Then people see those tweets and take the tweets as gospel and inaccurate WOM spreads like the damn telephone game.

Twitter "reviews" are one of the worst things to happen to film criticism.
 
Now, that was awesome. This flick ended up being exactly what I wanted it to be and then some. Just a breezy, summer, popcorn creature feature in the vein of a lot of the monster movies from the 90's and god do I miss films like this. Easily Aja's best since The Hills Have Eyes remake IMO. I also loved the fact that they didn't shy away from the gore either. There were some pretty damn gruesome deaths in this, but what else do you expect with Aja at the helm. The man still knows how to deliver the goods.

8/10
 
Marvolo said:
Yep Pet Sematary turned out to be extremely bland and forgettable.

A lot of people that go to early screenings just get caught up in the excitement of seeing a film early and it severely skews their reviews of the film. Then they go on twitter and because of the 140 character limit they try to convey their exagerated excitement as succinctly as possible which usually ends up being, "OMG Best film of the year/decade/ever!" Then people see those tweets and take the tweets as gospel and inaccurate WOM spreads like the damn telephone game.

Twitter "reviews" are one of the worst things to happen to film criticism.
Click to expand...

I hate Twitter and I hate that Twitter reactions are the norm after these screenings. Because when the actual reviews come out they tell a different story.
 
Just got back, it's pretty decent. Haven't seen Barry Pepper in a flick for a minute but he plays the somewhat estranged dad well and Kaya does her usual reluctant action girl shtick. You do feel the tension and Aja of course doesn't shy away from the gore.
 
Saw this tonight, loved it!

It was a very well-done "monster" movie that was tense all the way through and basically delivered a non-stop thrill ride, with no cheese or campy jokes whatsoever, or even jump scares to cheapen the atmosphere. In a world where so many movies feel like they have to insert humor whether or not it fits, this was a welcome return to form to the kind of movie with classic nail-biting suspense and somewhat of a mean streak—the alligators in the movie were just plain vicious, and the hurricane delivered a constant beat-down to the characters.

Also agree that this was so much better than The Meg from last year. The Meg was never even scary and the sharks in that movie never felt like a threat—Crawl, on the other hand, was consistently scary and no one in the movie felt safe.

The only thing that really subtracted from the movie was the ending and how it played out:
No helicopter would be flying through a hurricane while it's still active. That was just not believable. It would've been better to show the hurricane dying down while the helicopter was arriving.

But given Alexandre Aja's past movies that I've seen (THHE and Piranha 3D), I was actually expecting a different ending:
I would've preferred seeing an overhead shot of Haley and her dad on the roof of the house showing the waters rising and the alligators circling around and just ending it there, leaving you to wonder how they get out, or even if they get out. Now THAT would've been a great ending keeping in with Alexandre Aja's penchant for movie endings!
 
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Like Chris Stuckmann I'm also confused why Paramount refused to screen this for critics when critics on the whole seem to like this movie. But if I were to guess, it's for a few reasons:

1. Alexandre Aja doesn't have a great track record with Rotten Tomatoes meter. His last movie he directed was Horns. His last certified fresh rated film was Piranha 3D, which came out in 2010.
2. It is a low budget horror film. People tend to not care about critic reviews for those films as much and they have a better chance of becoming profitable than most big budget tentpoles that are more reliant on reviews and such.
3. Low budget horror movies usually, not always, tend to get trashed by critics anyway.
 
I can only see one movie for the next several weeks and I am having a hard time deciding between this and Midsommar. Midsommar's probably a little more artistically ambitious but I've heard this one has some great action sequences (my boy Walter Chaw gave it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars and he is not easy to please) and it's short and Midsommar is definitely not short. Feels like tight, well-executed thrillers are becoming a lost art-form and I do enjoy those types of movies on the big screen.
 
This looked like complete trash when I saw the trailer for it so I'm shocked at how good the reviews are.
 
I thought this looked really cool. A Raimi produced monster movie to boot? I can dig it.
 
This was an entertaining 90 minutes. Decent low budget creature features are increasingly rare these days. Apart from "The Shallows" I can't recall any others in the recent past.

2 thoughts on the movie

1 - I'm so glad they didn't end up making Sugar (the dog) gator chow. I always hate when the pets die.

2- It ended a bit abruptly. I was honestly expecting something like a "1 year later" flash forward with Haley winning a swim meet with her dad cheering her on.
 
This movie is silly and doesn't pretend to be much more than a man vs. gators vs. nature story and it kind of rules.

Feels like a movie that would have come out in the '90s and had a $50 million budget or whatever. Thanks to modern-day computer effects they were able to make this sucker for $17.5 million and it has the occasional dodgy FX shot to show for it but, man, I feel like Aja and his crew fulfilled some potential with this one. The craftsmanship is really up there.

Lean (87 minutes? THANK YOU), mean (these gators really, like, hate humans), and with great little Chekhovian details that are introduced early and have pay-offs in the final act. And while the characters are just a notch above sketches, they're effective and well-performed by Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper (so glad someone's still giving Barry Pepper work) and, like, you don't want them to die--which is kind of a big for a movie like this. Oh, and the dog. I spent much of the movie very scared for the dog.

Honestly, it's probably the best all-around flick I've seen this year and certainly the best theater experience I've had, my theater was pretty full and everyone ate it up. Best creature feature since I don't even know. There really is something to be said for a simple movie that knows exactly what it wants to do and does that very, very well.

And man alive did they nail the credits song.
 
WOW! this is my second favorite movie of 2019 after John Wick 3 being number one.

I enjoyed some of Aja's stuff like Hills Have Eyes, High Tension (despite that ending), Maniac remake (which he co-wrote and produce).

If you love old school creature features even Jaws you should definitely check out Crawl. Aja does it again with another awesome entry in the genre. A simple plot that works, likable leads, great performances, nice bits of gore, practical effects whenever possible, dynamic and unique direction, a tight pace, a witty and clever script loaded with refreshing fake-outs and tremendous amounts of tension.

The best horror film I have seen to date in 2019 for sure after Child's Play 2019. It is just such a fun film. If you have missed flicks like Alligator or Anaconda then this is going to be something you won't want to miss. A nice take on the Jaws formula and the best alligator film since Alligator 1980.

I like that it's something different in the mainstream horror genre than another readaptation of a book previously film, another pointless remake like Poltergeist (despite I enjoyed Child's Play 2019 as I didn't find CP pointless as it did something completely different unlike Poltergeist and Elm Street which both were lame copy/past remakes where CP did something different and I liked it), another ghost film, another found footage film or a sequel/reboot/prequel to a dead franchise like Saw, Hellraiser, Elm Street etc.
 
This was a pleasant surprise. I didn't expect this to be as much fun as it was. There's not a lot to it, a simple survival movie with a daughter, her father and a bunch of alligators in the crawlspace of a flooding house during a hurricane. Exactly what the trailer showed, that's it, that's all. In and out in 87 minutes and it was perfectly paced. And man these gators are freakin vicious! Some awesome kills, so injuries and constant edge of your seat tension...can't ask for anything more than that in an alligator movie.

8/10
 
This was a lot of fun and easily in my top 10 of the year (when I finally seen 10 flicks, that is). Dome legit scares, good deaths and overall vibe in a tight 90 minutes.

I didn't try to reinvent the wheel, but it gave it a nice new set of shiny rims.
 
While better than the meg, I ultimately came away disappointed. 6.5/10. Something to watch like I did if nothing else to do. I wanted to like it because it's rated r and I think they really tried, but too boring and not fun to me. For characters to survive what they do, it took itself way too serious. It's like it wanted to do both, but failed at being fun or serious.
 
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Yeah like above I enjoyed this but came away a little disappointed. The main characters were almost Wolverine level in their recovery but the movie plays it totally straight faced throughout.

I did like the main characters though and the drama behind them. Kaya and Barry Play well off each other and they hold things together with strong performances. The gators were mainly enjoyable with some gruesome kills and maulings, but they looked TOO CGI at times and more animatronics should have been the way to go.

Overall enjoyable but a little too predictable and unrealistic at times. 7/10.
 
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