Film Festival Review

Crawl • [Frightfest 2019]

A young woman, attempting to save her father during a hurricane, finds herself trapped in a flooding house full of hungry alligators.

No matter how terrifying a horror film is, you always know in the back of your head the events taking place could never actually happen. After watching Them! (1954), nobody expected giant ants to appear in their back garden. But what makes an animal horror truly suspenseful is knowing there’s an aspect of realism involved. Arachnophobia (1990) made everyone look into a tub of popcorn before putting their hand inside. The idea of animals acting on their killer instincts is more terrifying than a possessed doll.

After Jason Statham punched a Megalodon in the nose for The Meg (2018) and Syfy’s Sharknado (2013) films won a cult following, it was only a matter of time before the alligator ‘creature feature’ made a big-screen comeback. This is a sub-genre of horror that’s never had a lot of success, however. Outside of Alligator (1980), there’s never been a ‘gator-focused feature that equalled the suspense generated by Steven…