Crawl

People fleeing zombies hide out in a shopping centre.

A vampire comes to England

A woman is impregnated by the devil.

An American ambassador adopts the devil's son.

Psychics visit a haunted house.

Michael comes home.

Nothing beats a horror movie that can be summed up in one sentence. Here we get woman vs nature. Nice. Lean. Succinct. Just like Crawl itself.

Haley Keller is a Florida student heading into a category 5 hurricane in search of her father. Both the cops and the weather insist she turn back but stubbornness keeps her moving forward. Finding her old house in the early stages of flooding she ventures in and finds what she's looking for. She finds something else too courtesy of Florida's unique eco-system. Namely Alligators. A metric fuckton of Alligators.

Alexandre Aja has fine form when it comes to horror movies. High Tension (Switchblade Romance over here) was the vicious watch that put him on the map. His remake of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes blew the original out of the water and his 2013 adaption of Horns was one of the most unique horror films to appear in a long time. This year he gives us Crawl. A movie that's far more mainstream than any of the above but one that's equally as entertaining. It's a love letter to the relationship between a father and a daughter while being as gritty and terrifying as we've come to expect from Aja. And brilliantly it all clocks in at a smidge under 90 minutes. Gotta love a bit of economy.

Using editing skills as sharp as a beastie's teeth (sorry) Aja cuts away everything not necessary and leaves us with a lean and very very mean look at just how dangerous mother nature can be when she's pissed off. Yeah it gets far fetched and yeah your eyes will roll right out of your head at a couple of points but you'll be never less than gripped by it all. People vs nature films are always entertaining and this one is as intimate as they get. In your own home. Your abode, your safe space. The place where you don't have to worry about a thing. Ha. Wrong. Despite being more or less set in the one building throughout Aja gets amazing mileage out of the place. Us Irish folk will never know the wonder of a basement/crawl space and after this I'm pretty glad of the fact.

The most effective horror movies work when we care about the characters onscreen. Here we get Haley and Dave and Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper (A genuinely interesting actor who should have been far bigger) who do well to make us give a shit about them. Both are a pair of regular joe's who've been affected by traumatic family events and we can relate with them. They aren't rich, they ain't superheroes, they're just people trying to go about their day until Floridian life pops up to say hello. This film will do for Gator's what Jaws did for sharks btw. These aren't just hungry animals looking for a spot of brunch. Oh no, these are big malevolent bastards who's eyes glint in the dark while they wait to quarter the occasionally unlucky looter or policeman.

It's a nice surprise when something this entertaining turns up in the cinematic dumping ground that is the arse end of August. It's gruelling in places but well rounded characters combined with an exciting script and some lovingly crafted shocks make for a grand way to pass and hour and a half in the pictures.