Crawl (15.)
Directed by Alexandre Aja.
Starring Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Morfydd Clark, Ross Anderson and Jose Palma. 87 mins.
A Hurricane. A father and daughter stuck in a house. With alligators. And there you have it.
Having made Piranha 3D, French director Aja is reckoned to be an expert at underwater menace. His film could probably have done a better job of delineating the confined space it is going to work in but overall it is pretty effective with some decent special effects and enough Major Jumps. It also has two strong lead performances from a pair of talented actors who probably thought they deserved better than having to spend as much time in freezing water as Kate and Leo did on Titanic but for considerably less of a career boost. There's no spark or imagination to it, but as a job of work, it is proficient.
What it is striking is perhaps its role as cultural propaganda, which here is expressed in the film's insistence that we care about the father/ daughter relationship, that their struggle for survival is representative of a go-for-it, can-do attitude. Father Pepper has been training daughter Scodelario to be a champion swimmer, instilling the idea that she is an Alpha Competitor who must believe in herself to win or, in this case, survive. Hollywood has been shovelling tales of individual self-reliance on us for over a hundred years and in films like this, you can really see how ingrained the faith is. Nobody matters in this film but the main two, because they're family. Because they are family they can survive any number of alligator bites, which would be fatal to a member of the supporting cast. But the fate of anybody else is irrelevant. Probably they don't have the correct attitude. Or maybe they are orphans.
Directed by Alexandre Aja.
Starring Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Morfydd Clark, Ross Anderson and Jose Palma. 87 mins.
A Hurricane. A father and daughter stuck in a house. With alligators. And there you have it.
Having made Piranha 3D, French director Aja is reckoned to be an expert at underwater menace. His film could probably have done a better job of delineating the confined space it is going to work in but overall it is pretty effective with some decent special effects and enough Major Jumps. It also has two strong lead performances from a pair of talented actors who probably thought they deserved better than having to spend as much time in freezing water as Kate and Leo did on Titanic but for considerably less of a career boost. There's no spark or imagination to it, but as a job of work, it is proficient.
What it is striking is perhaps its role as cultural propaganda, which here is expressed in the film's insistence that we care about the father/ daughter relationship, that their struggle for survival is representative of a go-for-it, can-do attitude. Father Pepper has been training daughter Scodelario to be a champion swimmer, instilling the idea that she is an Alpha Competitor who must believe in herself to win or, in this case, survive. Hollywood has been shovelling tales of individual self-reliance on us for over a hundred years and in films like this, you can really see how ingrained the faith is. Nobody matters in this film but the main two, because they're family. Because they are family they can survive any number of alligator bites, which would be fatal to a member of the supporting cast. But the fate of anybody else is irrelevant. Probably they don't have the correct attitude. Or maybe they are orphans.
