A college student trapped in a crawlspace in the coastal Florida home of her injured father during a category 5 hurricane. Oh, and there's a giant alligator there too. Talk about one lousy day. But also one rollicking premise for a horror flick, one that delivers the fun and frights on all fronts and makes for a great addition to the canon of summertime creature features.
Crawl (U.S.A.)
Released: July 12, 2019
Director: Alexandre Aja
Screenplay: Michael & Sean Rasmussen
Tagline: "They were here first"
Cast:
Kaya Scodelario as Haley Keller
Barry Pepper as Dave Keller
Ross Anderson as Wayne Taylor
Moryfydd Clark as Beth Keller
Cso-Cso as Sugar
Haley Keller (Scodelario) is an accomplished swimmer at the University of Florida, though she may be losing her competitive edge. As Hurricane Wendy, a category 5 storm, bears down on the east coast, Haley learns from her sister Beth that no one can get ahold of their father, whom Haley has been slightly estranged from in the wake of their parents' divorce, and Beth is worried he won't follow the evacuation order. Haley takes it upon herself to drive into the heart of the raging storm only to discover that her father lies unconscious in the dank crawlspace beneath their old home, a giant bite mark in his shoulder and a lurking, prehistoric predator in the shadows.
The set-up for this film is thin and straightforward, and one might not think there's a ton of meat here (ba dum dum, psh!), but Aja has a gift for piling on complications and barriers that keep the plot and the tension on a steady incline for the entire brisk runtime. Haley and Dave just can NOT catch a break, but despite everything that possibly could go wrong going wrong at each turn, they dig deep, find their inner resolve, and get creative about what they can do next to maximize their chances of survival in what might be the least likely survival scenario ever. But damn if it's a blast to watch them try.
Crawl isn't overly violent by any means, but its sense of hopelessness is omnipresent, twisted into something both exhilarating and wickedly funny for the audience to watch. You can't help but bemoan "oh man!" every time Haley and Dave's initiative gets squandered by a new twist of fate, even as you cringe-smile in anticipation of what they'll do next. It's a lean film, one unconcerned with emotional baggage or extraneous subplots, and while this might be considered shoddy craftsmanship in other films, here it's exactly what Crawl needs to keep the thrill ride sensation in motion.
Scodelario offers a magnetic and grounded performance that aids in propelling the film forward. Haley is beaten down by everything from the elements to apex predators to her own sense of self-worth; she's literally fighting on her own against the world, and what could be a more universal feeling for audiences to empathize with? The odds are stacked against her three times over, yet there's a fire and a spunkiness in her character that lets us know that hey, she just might pull this off; let's see. Like Haley, Crawl has modest ambitions, and meets them with crowd-pleasing grace. A perfect popcorn movie any way you slice it. Or should I say any way you shred it to bits?
Crawl
5 - Totally Terrifying
4 - Crazy Creepy
3 - Fairly Frightening
2 - Slightly Scary
1 - Hardly Horror
Ari Aster faced a tall order in having to follow-up his nightmarish critical darling Hereditary (2018), but he aced it with Midsommar, an ambitious emotional drama concerning a grief, trauma, and failing relationships told through the lens of occult horror. Full of mania, madness, and anxiety, the film tells a more straightforward story than Aster's debut, yet never loses that pervading sense of inescapable dread that Aster has already made his trademark.
Midsommar (USA/Sweden)
Released: July 3, 2019
Director: Ari Aster
Screenplay: Ari Aster
Tagline: "Let the festivities begin"
Cast:
Florence Pugh as Dani Ardor
Jack Reynor as Christian Hughes
William Jackson Harper as Josh
Vilhelm Blomgren as Pelle
Will Poulter as Mark
Dani Ardor (Pugh) is an anxious college student in a declining, co-dependent relationship with her distant boyfriend, Christian (Reynor). After years of simmering discontentment, Christian is prepared to finally break up with Dani, but a shocking family tragedy leaves Dani gutted and alone, and Christian stays with her to lessen the pain. Several months later, Christian invites Dani to tag along on his guys' trip to Sweden, home of his classmate Pelle. Dani agrees and the five head out to Pelle's folksy hometown, a remote village in the far north of Scandinavia, as the villagers are preparing to hold a festival that occurs once every 90 years.
Everyone at the commune is very welcoming and kind, at first, but naturally as the vacation goes on, things become more strange, bizarre, and downright sinister. Unnerving rituals and eerie murals are only the beginning. It's familiar scaffolding for horror fans: loudmouth, horny Americans travel to rural countryside and get their comeuppance, and there are certainly stock characters at play here. The shitty boyfriend. The nerd. The pensive, cute "foreigner." Aster is aware of this framework, however, and though he may not transcend the template, he certainly makes it his own.
Much like in Hereditary, Aster explores emotional turmoil through grand imagery and twisted ideas, this time in specific regards to a doomed, toxic relationship. There's a tension here outside anything related to the physical safety of our core characters' stay in the village; a tension in watching both Dani and Christian continually postpone their inevitable breakup though it's clear to each of them that their time together has run its course. Neither of them can rip off the band-aid, and as viewers we know that the longer they wait, the more damned their fate.
What's interesting with Midsommar is that the conclusion is foregone. From the moment our heroes step foot in Pelle's village, there's only one way this can end,but the art of the film is in driving us towards that inevitable ending while still somehow maintaining interest, dread, and tension. Of course, we don't know the specifics of how this will all play out, but we know that it will, and that question locks the viewer in a vice grip as we wait to see what sort of specific, disturbing violence will rule the third act.
The symbolism can be a bit heavy-handed at times, though that may be because we get to spend so much time dwelling on Aster's foreshadowing. It's a long film, and there's lots of extended, lingering shots to give the viewer time to pick up on all the runes and drawings and murals that spell out what sort of danger Dani and the others are wading into. The camerawork in general is phenomenal, and the use of pastel and light to create such uncomfortable imagery is astounding. It's one of the few, great horror films that is truly both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. It's a film with a soul, formulaic and campy at times yet sweeping and vivid at others; a riff on The Wicker Man (1973) that morphs into its own gorgeous, demented creature that is at once lush and tranquil, jarring and fiery.
Midsommar
5 - Totally Terrifying
4 - Crazy Creepy
3 - Fairly Frightening
2 - Slightly Scary
1 - Hardly Horror
The set-up for this film is thin and straightforward, and one might not think there's a ton of meat here (ba dum dum, psh!), but Aja has a gift for piling on complications and barriers that keep the plot and the tension on a steady incline for the entire brisk runtime. Haley and Dave just can NOT catch a break, but despite everything that possibly could go wrong going wrong at each turn, they dig deep, find their inner resolve, and get creative about what they can do next to maximize their chances of survival in what might be the least likely survival scenario ever. But damn if it's a blast to watch them try.
