SciFiNow – September 2019

BIG MOVIE

Crawl

032 | WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

Everyone knows the structure of a
home invasion horror. You’ve got
your happy(ish) family, your suburban
McMansion, and you’ve got the bad
guys trying to get in and stalk them.
Maybe it’s a break-in gone bad or
maybe it’s Purge Night. But when
your home invader is a colossal
alligator, the game has changed.
“I didn’t need to bring an agenda, like:
‘Oh, that mean one is going to get revenge!’”
laughs Alexandre Aja. “No, they are here.
There are fi ve million-plus alligators in the
wild in the southern part of the US. There are
attacks on people very often. It’s happening
everywhere in the world, recently in Rio
there was some fl ooding where the cops
couldn’t go and get them, it happened also in
Queensland. With more fl ooding and more
storms, with global warming, nature is kind
of fi ghting back and getting in our way of
living, and the creatures are also coming.”
That’s right, Crawl is pitching its heroine
Haley Keller (The Maze Runner and Skins
alum Kaya Scodelario) against a hungry
alligator, all while a Category Five hurricane
rages outside. Haley’s rushed home against
the advice of, well, everyone, to rescue her
dad (Barry Pepper). It’s bad enough trying to
move her wounded father through a house
that is rapidly fl ooding, but then in comes
the uninvited guest...
“I remember two years ago receiving that
script from my co-producer on the movie
and reading the logline, and the logline was
so simple, so straightforward, this survival
story about that young woman who had to
go in, during a Category Five hurricane,
and save her dad from that place full of
alligators,” enthuses Aja. “That simple story,

that very straightforward survival story, was

an obvious choice right away. I couldn’t read

the script right away but I kept fantasising

about this idea over the weekend and a few

days, and then I read the script but by that

time I already had the movie in my head.”

Aja burst onto the genre scene with his

nerve-rattling 2003 French horror High

Ten s ion (Switchblade Romance in the UK)

and his gruelling 2006 remake of Wes

Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes. Since then, he

tells us that he’s had fun hopping from genre

to genre, experimenting with daft creature

feature fun with Piranha (“Jaws gone wild”

as he puts it), dark horror fable Horns and

the baffl ing blend of Brian De Palma and

Guillermo del Toro that was The 9th Life Of

Louis Drax (we can all agree to ignore his

Mirrors remake, everybody gets one). But he

explains that he’s always had a real craving

to make another movie that really puts the

audience through the wringer.

“I couldn’t fi nd the right subject until

[Crawl] was sent to me and I was like ‘this is

something that gives me the opportunity of

crafting a real roller coaster for the audience,

that’s very serious and straightforward and

about survival with the very interesting

element that the home invasion is not with

a killer, [it’s] with a natural disaster and an

animal that lives in the neighbourhood.

“It’s always very important when you

fall in love with a subject,” he continues.

“Because when you’re in the water for 40

days with a wet suit on and a full crew and

you have rain and wind and the sound is 120

decibels plus, it becomes a really diffi cult

place to be for everyone. So you have to

remember why you’re there and you always

go back to that fi rst moment!”

And if it was important for Aja to

remember why he wanted to hop into a

water tank for 40 days, it was even more of

a challenge for Kaya Scodelario. The actor is

no stranger to physically challenging shoots,

but she tells us that Crawl was “really,

really tough. I’ve actually done quite a lot

of underwater work,” she explains. “One of

my early movies was called The Truth About

Emanuel and I had to learn to scuba dive for

that. On Pirates we did a lot of underwater

stuff. It’s something that I have had to do

before, but this was quite different just

because of the amount of water.

“We shot it in a warehouse, inside a giant

tank,” she tells us. “It was kind of this huge

swimming pool, and throughout the shoot

they’d fi ll the tank up with more water so

the level would rise day-by-day as though

it was in real time with the hurricane. We

started with having tap water around our

ankles, and then by the end of the shoot

we were swimming through the tank. The

crew couldn’t touch the ground. We had

fl oorboards coming up and furniture falling

apart, and we’d have the director almost

drowning while trying to eat a hotdog. It was

quite interesting, but also a lot of fun.”

You’d have thought that Aja would have

been extremely well-prepared for dealing

with water tank shoots given his Piranha

experience (well enough to co-ordinate his

lunch, at least), but the single location setting

and limited time frame presented more

challenges than you may expect. “Oh yeah,

from all the movies I’ve done this is maybe

the most technical one because we had to

build seven or eight tanks, each of them was

gigantic to be able to be a full part of the set.

The tanks were supposed to be able to resist

water rising to the top with fi ltration and

wind and rain and so many visual effects.

It was a really technical movie. At the end

[it] became almost like a gut experience. My

feeling is when you watch Crawl you really

go through a survival experience and it’s not

about all the technical things that we had

to face, it’s about: can you make it to the

end of the day? And every time you try to do

something, something dreadful is happening

and makes it even more diffi cult to achieve.

It’s about, can you push the boundaries, the

human boundaries, to the limit of becoming

that predator yourself?”

Speaking of that predator, one distinction

that Aja wants to make clear is that Crawl

There’s no way out for

the Keller family.

BIG MOVIE

Crawl

032 | WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

Everyone knows the structure of a
home invasion horror. You’ve got
your happy(ish) family, your suburban
McMansion, and you’ve got the bad
guys trying to get in and stalk them.
Maybe it’s a break-in gone bad or
maybe it’s Purge Night. But when
your home invader is a colossal
alligator, the game has changed.
“I didn’t need to bring an agenda, like:
‘Oh, that mean one is going to get revenge!’”
laughs Alexandre Aja. “No, they are here.
There are fi ve million-plus alligators in the
wild in the southern part of the US. There are
attacks on people very often. It’s happening
everywhere in the world, recently in Rio
there was some fl ooding where the cops
couldn’t go and get them, it happened also in
Queensland. With more fl ooding and more
storms, with global warming, nature is kind
of fi ghting back and getting in our way of
living, and the creatures are also coming.”
That’s right,Crawll is pitching its heroine
Haley Keller (The Maze Runnerr andSkins
alum Kaya Scodelario) against a hungry
alligator, all while a Category Five hurricane
rages outside. Haley’s rushed home against
the advice of, well, everyone, to rescue her
dad (Barry Pepper). It’s bad enough trying to
move her wounded father through a house
that is rapidly fl ooding, but then in comes
the uninvited guest...
“I remember two years ago receiving that
script from my co-producer on the movie
and reading the logline, and the logline was
so simple, so straightforward, this survival
story about that young woman who had to
go in, during a Category Five hurricane,
and save her dad from that place full of
alligators,” enthuses Aja. “That simple story,

that very straightforward survival story, was

an obvious choice right away. I couldn’t read

the script right away but I kept fantasising

about this idea over the weekend and a few

days, and then I read the script but by that

time I already had the movie in my head.”

Aja burst onto the genre scene with his

nerve-rattling 2003 French horrorHigh

Ten s ionn (Switchblade Romanceein the UK)

and his gruelling 2006 remake of Wes

Craven’sThe Hills Have Eyes. Since then, he

tells us that he’s had fun hopping from genre

to genre, experimenting with daft creature

feature fun withPiranhaa (“Jawss gone wild”

as he puts it), dark horror fableHornss and

the baffl ing blend of Brian De Palma and

Guillermo del Toro that was The 9th Life Of

Louis Draxx (we can all agree to ignore his

Mirrorss remake, everybody gets one). But he

explains that he’s always had a real craving

to make another movie that really puts the

audience through the wringer.

“I couldn’t fi nd the right subject until

[Crawlll] was sent to me and I was like ‘this is

something that gives me the opportunity of

crafting a real roller coaster for the audience,

that’s very serious and straightforward and

about survival with the very interesting

element that the home invasion is not with

a killer, [it’s] with a natural disaster and an

animal that lives in the neighbourhood.

“It’s always very important when you

fall in love with a subject,” he continues.

“Because when you’re in the water for 40

days with a wet suit on and a full crew and

you have rain and wind and the sound is 120

decibels plus, it becomes a really diffi cult

place to be for everyone. So you have to

remember why you’re there and you always

go back to that fi rst moment!”

And if it was important for Aja to

remember why he wanted to hop into a

water tank for 40 days, it was even more of

a challenge for Kaya Scodelario. The actor is

no stranger to physically challenging shoots,

but she tells us that Crawll was “really,

really tough. I’ve actually done quite a lot

of underwater work,” she explains. “One of

my early movies was called The Truth About

Emanuell and I had to learn to scuba dive for

that. On Piratess we did a lot of underwater

stuff. It’s something that I have had to do

before, but this was quite different just

because of the amount of water.

“We shot it in a warehouse, inside a giant

tank,” she tells us. “It was kind of this huge

swimming pool, and throughout the shoot

they’d fi ll the tank up with more water so

the level would rise day-by-day as though

it was in real time with the hurricane. We

started with having tap water around our

ankles, and then by the end of the shoot

we were swimming through the tank. The

crew couldn’t touch the ground. We had

fl oorboards coming up and furniture falling

apart, and we’d have the director almost

drowning while trying to eat a hotdog. It was

quite interesting, but also a lot of fun.”

You’d have thought that Aja would have

been extremely well-prepared for dealing

with water tank shoots given hisPiranha

experience (well enough to co-ordinate his

lunch, at least), but the single location setting

and limited time frame presented more

challenges than you may expect. “Oh yeah,

from all the movies I’ve done this is maybe

the most technical one because we had to

build seven or eight tanks, each of them was

gigantic to be able to be a full part of the set.

The tanks were supposed to be able to resist

water rising to the top with fi ltration and

wind and rain and so many visual effects.

It was a really technical movie. At the end

[it] became almost like a gut experience. My

feeling is when you watchCrawll you really

go through a survival experience and it’s not

about all the technical things that we had

to face, it’s about: can you make it to the

end of the day? And every time you try to do

something, something dreadful is happening

and makes it even more diffi cult to achieve.

It’s about, can you push the boundaries, the

human boundaries, to the limit of becoming

that predator yourself?”

Speaking of that predator, one distinction

that Aja wants to make clear is thatCrawl

There’s no way out for

the Keller family.

“I WANTED

TO MAKE

SOMETHING

REALLY SCARY”

ALEXANDRE AJA