Crawl (2019)

Crawl is a horror movie about a Florida hurricane that I think was just intended to serve as propaganda for other people not to come to this already overpopulated state. It’s basically like what every other state thinks Florida’s hurricane seasons are always like. Right down to the gators happily devouring anybody that comes into their path. Hurricane seasons are like buffets for gators.

WARNING: A HURRICANE OF SPOILERS in this review!!

Director: Alexander Aja

Starring: Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper

IMDb

Co-written with Tony and Michelle.

The movie follows a woman, Haley, who has been competitive swimming her whole life who just can’t seem to quite win when it counts. She talks to her sister as this category 5 hurricane is barreling toward the state, and they can’t get in touch with their father. The movie throws in some exposition about how the family has been split up for years, because we won’t have time to delve into the rich complex drama of this family once the gator stuff starts up. And they add in a few jabs so we know they all still hate each other. Ah, family.

So Haley, possessing that classic Floridian insanity, decides to drive down I-75 to find her father, despite the sky looking like it actively wants to murder everyone – which, in Florida, is understandable. She sneaks into town against the cops’ warnings, and finds her dad in a weird crawlspace beneath his house, presumably built because this is the kind of hick nutjob character who is paranoid we’re going to have a nuclear war any day because of the liberal darkness in the country – but the movie doesn’t expound on this. Just me theorizing here.

Unfortunately for this poor sap, a bunch of gators have snuck in – the scamps! One of them bites Haley on the leg but she seems fine after, still able to run and swim perfectly fine. Must have been one of those gators with cotton balls for teeth. The dad has also already been maimed. I kept expecting him to die, but I guess he’s just too tough to do that when he has all that online dating and selling his house to move into a shitty condo like the movie shows us. He has so much to live for!

The movie unfolds into a pretty thrilling, fun ride as they try to avoid both the gators and the flooding from this monster storm. It’s a well constructed thriller. A lot of tense moments. Even if I’m skeptical of how many times they survive being bitten by gators. Shit, man. I guess gator bites aren’t so bad after all.

Several plot points in this thing revolve around Haley having to use her swimming talents, which her dad helped train into her from a young age. Every time this happens, her dad whispers something under his breath like “you go, honey!” Did he train her to swim specifically so he could feel good about himself? I hope he enjoyed the bragging rights from mercilessly beating a competitive sport into his own child. I’m also glad they chose a discipline that could help for the EXACT CIRCUMSTANCES of this movie’s plot. What kind of luck is that?

Also, they get in a few lines about their family drama in. The dad even takes time to talk about how life was so hard with his ex wife/Haley’s mom. It’s like yeah, but we’re still trapped in a flooding crawlspace with gators. I don’t think your ex wife can compare with this, buddy. It is nice that the gators are respectful and polite, letting them converse without interrupting. Gators truly are some of nature’s most considerate creatures.

There’s a lot of stuff that happens – mostly more gator attacks, including a thrilling scene where they try and brave a flooded area full of gators to get to a boat. Then the boat ships them back to the house they’d just come from. Whoops! It’s like you can never truly escape from where you came. Powerful stuff. Metaphoric, even.

Oh and there’s a scene where she shoots a gun like five times in a gator’s mouth. I thought that was cool.

Eventually they make it to the roof just in time for a helicopter, surveying the ruins with a sense of awe no doubt, to pick them up, flying them to safety so they can no doubt continue their familial arguing like earlier! Hooray for dysfunction!

But no, seriously. I wanted this to go even further. I wish they hadn’t been saved right away. I wanted to see where this post-apocalyptic wasteland could go. Maybe have the gators form some kind of union and gain human intelligence over time. Then, as the rule of law fades to distant memory and the post-hurricane humans have to co-exist with the gators, the humans could try and negotiate with the gators in order to survive and possibly escape back to civilization. That would be cool. I long for the day when a film will go this far!

Until then, this is a pretty fucking solid monster movie. It’s better than some others I’ve seen in the genre – I mean if you have a choice between this and, say, a Jaws sequel, then the choice should be clear enough. It’s well made and entertaining.

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Death Curse of Tartu (1966)

They say the past was a simpler time, free of all the modern hustle and bustle and stress. The 1960s, for example, was a much simpler time, as shown in the movie Death Curse of Tartu, which is an hour and a half long and only about 35 of those minutes actually have anything happening in it. Ahh the good old days. Actually, saying there's 35 minutes of something “happening” in this is pretty generous...

Director: William Grefé

Starring: Fred Pinero, Babette Sherrill

IMDb

Co-written with Clayton.

This is an insufferable film with as much charm as waiting in line at the DMV, only usually you get something done a lot faster at the DMV. It was made at the same time as Sting of Death, another bad old 60s movie I reviewed a few years back. But this one is actually worse, mostly because the dance scenes in this are way, way less good, which is the standard by which all 60s horror films were judged even back then.

This one starts off with something sure to sweep the audience off their feet – twenty fucking minutes of nothing but some dude just walking through the Everglades. There's barely any dialogue and we have no idea why we should care about him, but hey, the music is so super over the top and lavish pomp and fanfare that we don't need anything actually happening! The music alone is enough.

Row, row, row your boat...sorry, I got nothing. I should have just left this caption box blank. God dammit.

He gets killed off by a snake. The music is the same pompous soundtrack now as it was when he was just walking through the forest. I really don't think that's the greatest way to build tension. Indiana Jones wouldn't have been as good if they had high-flying soundtrack music blaring while he was talking to people in his office back at home. Not all food is better when you put a bunch of sprinkles and whipped cream on it. Am I getting through with these comparisons? Point is – lay off the music until something exciting is happening!

Unless that's a real snake, I just can't believe this performance.

Ha! There! I showed THIS 50-year-old film how much I can critique it! Now I will truly look really smart.

To the film's credit, they do lay off that music in favor of … something even more annoying. It's this bizarre sort of ritualistic drumming with some weird slow chanting every now and then. I guess they were trying to set a mood, but it's too repetitive and mostly I think it was intended to send viewers into a catatonic state so they wouldn't be bothered by how boring the rest of the movie is. Though I do like that they showed us how current Florida Governor Rick Scott was spawned... 

Behold, yes, the birth of evil.

At this point, the movie only has about an hour left of its runtime. I can just picture a group of lazy filmmakers high-fiving one another in the editing room. “Yeah! Economic storytelling!”

Then we're introduced to generic body count characters Nos. 2 through 6! They're all white and nerdy and have no real other personality traits, which is the perfect type of person to get lost and die in some foreign place. That's some good old fashioned xenophobia for you. Much better than the modern kind, at any rate.

So I guess the movie now becomes about these bungholes. One of the guys, the leader I suppose, is constantly talking just to hear his own lips flap. I can say that because they see a skull in the woods and get freaked out, and one of the girls says it's the legend of Tartu, who can turn into animals or something. The main dude says no, he doesn't believe in that, it's all just superstition!

We found a human skull on a stick in the woods where we're going to have our field trip! Let's just disregard this and act like nothing is wrong!

But then, a few scenes later, he says he's worried about it. Maybe in a movie with more character development, this could be considered a plot point. But I think it's because the writers were on drugs and forgot about the first scene due to the large amount of time spent walking around doing nothing between the two.

In the middle of all this, the other kids ask if they can go down to the river and party and he says they can, reluctantly, not really sure it's safe for them – but he lets them go. Then later, he tells his girlfriend he wanted them to go and told them to, so he could talk to her about the curse stuff. What? This guy changes his mind more than Two-Face from Batman. Get a grip. Think!

But it ain't like the other characters are any better. They're the kinds of people who like to have a dance party on top of some ancient burial ground in the middle of the Everglades. I don't know who taught these morons to dance. I know white people never had much rhythm, but this is ridiculous.

Oh yeah, block the fucking camera! That's great choreography!

Hmm... let's try to find some positives with this scene, as hard as that might be. Uh, at least they're keeping to the spirit of Sting of Death? But at least that one's dance scene was focusing on the girls' faces and asses. I don't know what the fuck the cameras were directed to do during this scene – focus on the girls' abdomens! That's sexy!

Then they get in the water and are immediately killed by a shark that shows up randomly, presumably being an incarnation of this Tartu they keep going on about. Leader guy shows up with his gun and starts shooting at the shark. I think it'd be funny if he accidentally shot the two friends in the water and missed the shark entirely. But that doesn't happen.

The greatest field trips are always the ones where you need to have a gun at the ready at all times...

After that, they decide things have gotten bad, and now they have to leave. But they can't all just go back the way they came, no – they have to send one dude out on his own to bring back help. Why? It's never really explained. That's just the way they want to do it, so they send off Johnny to go do it, saying he's perfect because he can take care of himself in the wild.

But before we can get to how he does, we have to sit through another loooooooong scene of him wandering around in the Everglades. Because, I guess the movie hadn't shown us enough of that yet.

Pretty sure this guy ate paint chips as a kid...

Then, Johnny – the guy who we were told was so good at surviving that he'd be totally fine out here – sits down against a tree and is killed instantly by a snake. He doesn't put up a fight and he isn't taken by surprise – he just sits down of his own volition and lets himself die. That's amazing, after the stuff we heard a few minutes earlier about how good he was at surviving. It's like hearing someone is really good at drawing, then you see that they can't stay inside the lines when coloring. The cognitive dissonance is complete.

This = good in the wild, can survive. Awesome.

The remaining characters all find this cave place with a tomb inside. But before they can get to that, one girl is scared by the cave and runs outside, where she is chased by an alligator for way, way longer than any alligator chase scene ever needed to go. I love how she runs like hell to get away from that dumb gator, only it's walking at a very slow pace. She really sucks at running.

Now we know where Michael and Jason learned this trick from - Tartu!

Seriously, how does she get up into a tree? What is going on?

Gotta love the end of the chase, too, where she succumbs to injuries from a bite on the arm and dies. Wow. The tragedy is just too much to bear.

Back in the cave, they get into a fight with this guy, who pops out of the tomb – I guess it's supposed to be Tartu himself, who has taken all film just to show his lazy ass on screen. Which I guess is pretty much the same way the movie treated its audience. I love how they just shoot first, ask questions later. Like, really, what if he was a benevolent spirit who could help them out? How the fuck do they know they need to fight him? And even so, they're fucking breaking into his tomb. What did they really expect him to do - invite them to watch TV and have pie?

"What are you douchebags doing in here? I'm trying to sleep. I have an important meeting in the morning."

So they just drown him in quicksand and that's the ending!

That look of mild irritation basically sums up the audience reaction to the film. Boom! Oh yeah. Nailed it again!

Overall this was an asinine film with pretty much no redeeming qualities. Everything about this story is bad. It's basically a story about some idiots who come into this place, disturb a grave, and then when the sleeping ghost is mad and starts killing them off, they kill it in return. And it's a happy ending. That's like if you broke into my house, I attacked you to try and keep you out, and you killed me, then you were the one who got praised as a hero. What a load.

Most of the film is made up of the characters wandering around doing nothing in the Everglades. Being filmed there on-site doesn't excuse how mind-numbingly boring this whole thing is. Propaganda videos from tree-hugging Everglades rights groups are more interesting. B-roll footage from National Geographic have more substance.

Sigh. So I guess this movie would never really make Florida a great place to make movies. Oh well. I'm sure something else would eventually put Florida on the map.

Maybe.

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.

Review: Endure (2010) TH

One life for another

A bound and gagged woman in central Florida is driven to an out of reach location in the middle of the night by a stranger and has her photograph taken as she's tied against a tree in the woods. Leaving her alive and alone, the man drives off and somewhere on his trip suddenly has a deer go through his windshield killing him. An experienced detective named Emory Lane (Judd Nelson)--who's at home with his terminally ill wife Sirena (Joey Lauren Adams)--is called out to what initially looks like a normal car wreck but because there is a photograph, blood and handcuff keys the police want to look further into the suspicious evidence that might point to foul play.

A young, former west coast detective named Zeth Arnold (Deven Sawa) is called in as an apprentice in account of Lane being tied up in his personal life. They frequently butt heads as Arnold is over-confident and has a somewhat brash way of handling the case than the by-the-book veteran. Judd Nelson plays the character somewhat reserved and contemplative to the point of appearing detached. His character has trust issues, but gives some leeway as he can't be two places at once. Devon Sawa delivers some dry banter and his character speaks what's on his mind, which comes off as cocky but might actually have something to offer under that rookie demeanor.

There are hundreds of miles of roadway and five hundred thousand acres of swamp to comb through, so the detectives start with what they know. They question the dead man named Macey's neighbors, who explain that he was a loner, not right in the head and doesn't have any living relatives that he keeps in touch with. The girl is identified as Daphne (Clare Kramer) by a friend who said she just talked to her last night but is currently missing. A profiler is called in and suggests that there might be an accomplice that he seeks approval from. Taking cues from John Lithgow in "Dexter" of who you wouldn't expect, Tom Arnold brings a good-guy face to his role as Simon but makes you think twice about what's underneath. From one revelation to the next the detectives uncover an underground network, which gives them more to contend with to save the young woman's life before it's too late.

This is a gradually paced drama about searching for answers. It also deals with saving a life and watching one depart. Lane's wife is cooped up with nowhere to go, and he wants to stay but has everywhere to be; though he eventually uses the time away to push aside his feelings and in an odd sense cope. What a viewer gets: a basic story about human suffering that isn't confusing or muddled with layer upon layer of twists as it keeps it conventional as far as crime plots go. This is more held back than the typical shoot-'em-up-warrantless-bustin'-down-the-door-alcoholic features you normally see in the genre. This injects some feelings and leaves ample room open for the viewer's own interpretations, as well as the actions and motivations in the movie seem reasonable.

The major issue with "Endure" is it doesn't always capitalize on its own story line due to trying to meld two different subplots and be thoroughly realistic while at it. This isn't going for the usual cinematic experience, as the editing and cinematography are restrained, the dialogue is close enough to how real people speak and the situation isn't glamorized or sensationalized. There's drama to be had here though the delivery felt somewhat flat and the characters didn't end up being as memorable as they could have. At times it comes across as cut and dry, even when a piece of evidence is unraveled to get closer to finding the victim while she's still alive. Not until the latter portion is there much in the way of being gripping. There's no sense in over-dramatizing the story like so many do and force it, but the atmosphere feels calm and relaxed to the point of being dozy and less important than it should be, as the dire circumstances at hand don't always have the capability of captivating one's undivided attention for the then and now.

Director: Joe O'Brien
Starring: Judd Nelson, Devon Sawa, Joey Lauren Adams, Tom Arnold, Clare Kramer
Website: IMDB

Review: Meet the Fockers (2004) TH

When opposite personalities collide

The second Focker film takes the growing relationships further by introducing Greg's parents to the Byrnes' mother and father. Things don't go off without a hitch or ten as both parties take a different approach to lifestyles and parenting: one free-spirited, the other planned.

The name "Greg Focker" should be synonymous with disaster. Everywhere he goes and every situation he finds himself in causes more accidents to take place than student drivers on road tests. You can expect almost everything to go wrong and trying to figure out where it's coming from involves some obvious setups but also a number of curve balls to throw the viewer off. This is also filled with one-off zingers that you might not expect, though they pass through with cartoonish shock instead of a rewarding layered buildup.

Jack Byrnes is a three-step ahead guy at his core, down to the blueprints of his armored RV to get to the tropical Focker residence with Greg's parents awaiting with open arms and liberal views. Barbra Streisand, playing Rozalin Focker, injects the first strong female personality that doesn't act like a wallflower with her open advice as a sexual therapist. Greg soon becomes a referee to separate the tension and anxiety with both parties attempting to either humble themselves to accommodate or change the other person to their own way. One can relate to him as embarrassing moments are brought up, such as a wall of "accomplishments," a detailed scrap book and even revealing his first time. New characters are introduced, including the little grandson of Greg's girlfriend's sister who's training for brilliance, as well as the seductive nanny with spiced up accent and a questionable son.

The characters often play their roles deadpan with chaos going on around them. This takes serious subjects about relationships and puts an over-the-top spin on them. Compared to "Meet the Parents," it's much more outlandish, though with more scenarios that ring with Saturday morning cartoon flavor than what could really happen. This slips in some messages without getting too serious or sentimental that deal with compromising your differences to get along with others and splitting away from the life your parents preplanned for you. The second film was somewhat entertaining and came with some memorable scenes, though it doesn't hold the freshness and power of the first film even with some of the same jokes retreaded.

Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Owen Wilson, Teri Polo
Website: IMDB