‘Crawl’ delivers a solid Florida Man thriller with hurricanes, alligators and crawlspaces, oh my!

Posted on July 19, 2019

By MARK VIOLA

I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know what it’s like to be a doctor watching a medical show, noticing all of the obvious (to them) mistakes made by the writers and actors. I’m also not a cop, so I don’t know what it’s like to be a cop watching a crime thriller and see all of the procedural issues that don’t have any resemblance to reality.

Having lived in Florida for more than 30 years, however, I do know a little bit about alligators and hurricanes. As such, I was more than a little apprehensive about going to see “Crawl,” a new horror thriller about alligators and hurricanes. I said as much in my preview last week, nitpicking some of the dialogue in the trailer.

Fortunately, not only were the worst lines of the trailers not in the movie, “Crawl” is actually a solid thriller with a pair of quality performances, steady direction and some genuine scares (at least the ones not given away by the trailers).

This isn’t a great movie, but as a creature-oriented horror thriller, it is quite successful in being just that — more successful than fellow newcomer “Stuber” was at being an action comedy.

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