In the Alligator’s Mouth – review of the movie “Crawling Death”

We had to wait a long time for the return of Alexandre Aja’s horror films. His last successful film was Rogi in 2013, an adaptation of Joe Hill’s novel. At that time, the talented director played the role of the producer more often. A few weeks ago, the thriller Creeping Death hit the screens . Is it a successful return of the creator to the roots?

Trapped

The plot of Alexandre Aja’s new horror is banal. A Category 5 hurricane is to pass through the United States. A young girl named Haley (Kaya Scodelario), once a gifted swimmer, tries to enter the former family home for sale to see if her father is safe. She finds him unconscious and injured in the basement, accompanied by hungry alligators. The destructive element decimated their farm and set them free. The situation of our heroes is getting more and more dangerous every minute. Water begins to build up in the building and the daughter and her father are trapped inside.

Master of building tension

Alexandre Aja knows perfectly well how to build a growing sense of threat, skillfully dose the tension in order to absorb the viewers’ attention for a long time. At the same time, he does not waste time dwelling on the plot or the characteristics of the characters. The elements that give way to building a constant aura of terror are presented in a very superficial way. The director avoids exuberance and thorough exposure, instead he focuses on what he has already got us used to with his productions – fictional simplicity and bloody horror. In Creeping Death, we will not find unnecessary moralizing, but we will get a solid dose of tension and unceremonious gore scenes. The film is definitely not ambitious, its only purpose is to provide the audience with a good 1.5-hour entertainment and provide emotions.

Nothing new

Creeping deathas I mentioned, it does not belong to the category of these ambitious productions that are supposed to revolutionize the genre or introduce a bit of freshness. The director takes full advantage of the recognized horror props. It is not able to surprise the viewer in any way and is by no means trying to do so. Despite the clichédity that makes the film a B-class horror film, Aje manages to keep the viewer’s attention efficiently enough for this hour and a half screening to pass lightly and quite nicely. The acting duo of Barry Pepper and Kaya Scodelario, who perform very well on the big screen, will ensure the satisfaction of the audience. Meanwhile, while their cooperation is decent, the account presented in the plot is insufficiently developed, which makes it lose its authenticity. However, knowing Alexandre Aja’s directorial craft we know that the aesthetics of camp and the juicy bloodshed are more important to him than the fictional refinement of the threads. Without these elements, constituting the essence of the workshop of a talented, but already slightly burnout creator, with a horror game in a characteristic style, there would be no question. This film only confirms our belief that not much has changed in horror cinema over the years, and some directors remain faithful to their vision of reality.

We would like to thank the Cinema City chain for the opportunity to watch the film.