So for me it was an obvious choice from
the beginning that I wanted to have full CG
creatures but interaction with the water.”
This meant that some leaps of the
imagination were required from Scodelario.
The water and wind may have been there,
but there was something very different in
place of the killer gator. “Yeah, we had three
stages: we had nothing there, where I was
just screaming into the abyss; then we hadwhat was essentially a green pillow on sticks;
and then we had a lovely Serbian gentleman
who, bless his heart, would wear a skin-tight
bright green lycra head-to-toe suit, and I
would scream at him,” she remembers. “He
was sweet but the outfi t left nothing to the
imagination. I was essentially screaming at
the Serbian guy most of the time.”
While the immediate draw for a lot of
monster movie fans will be the angry animal“I’M NO ONE’S
GIRLFRIEND...
SHE’S A KICK-
ASS CHICK”
K AYA SCO DEL ARIOBIG MOVIE
Crawl034 | WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK
is not a movie about a giant monster,
something that has crawled up out of the
bayou, never before seen by human eyes.
No, nature’s oldest killing machine is plenty
scary enough already. “I didn’t want to make
a monster movie,” he explains. “I wanted
to make something really, really scary but I
didn’t want to make a monster movie. I didn’t
want to create giant alligators that would
not be believable. I wanted the story to be in
the realm of possibilities. There is a realistic
way to create them and I wanted to bring
that hyperreal feeling. If you look online,
you can see hours of alligator or crocodile
footage. Most of them will be boring because
it’s just sitting in the sun and not moving
but some of them are just the most scary,
dreadful attacks, vicious movements and you
understand why this creature [has] barely
changed for the last 16 million years. They
are effi cient in their design, they are like
killing machines, they are very territorial
and I didn’t need anything else.”
However, going as real as possible actually
meant that creating a CG alligator was
the only option. “I couldn’t fi nd a way to
do animatronics that would re-create the
accurate movement of these alligators,” the
director explains. “And today when you look
at what you can do in CGI, it’s spectacular.
with the teeth, what will keep them in their
seats is the quality of the lead performance.
It doesn’t matter how impressive your CGI
is if we’re not invested, and Aja tells us that
he knew Scodelario would be the perfect fi t
for this role. “In the end it’s not about the
quality of the CGI or the set or the storm,
it’s all about the actors and I knew that
everything was about who is going to play
[Haley] and who is going to be able to carry
the movie on her shoulders,” he explains.
“I’ve been a fan of Kaya since Skins. She
was an interesting choice because she had
that kind of determination and the look that
even in the darkness, doesn’t give up. She
incarnates that kind of fi ght and resistance,
and she’s also very physical when it comes
to fi ghting alligators! She’s really good in the
movie. And knowing what she went through
making it, because we were in the middle of
it with all the wind, storm, rain water all the
time...Without her I would never have been
able to make it.”
“I’d look for movies that had strong women
in the centre, and when this project came
about I started talking to the producers about
it and then the director, and had a discussion
about [how we could be inspired by other
women] in this genre,” explains Scodelario.
“Sarah Connor is my hero. She’s the mostKaya Scodelario was
excited to carry a fi lm.
So for me it was an obvious choice from
the beginning that I wanted to have full CG
creatures but interaction with the water.”
This meant that some leaps of the
imagination were required from Scodelario.
The water and wind may have been there,
but there was something very different in
place of the killer gator. “Yeah, we had three
stages: we had nothing there, where I was
just screaming into the abyss; then we hadwhat was essentially a green pillow on sticks;
and then we had a lovely Serbian gentleman
who, bless his heart, would wear a skin-tight
bright green lycra head-to-toe suit, and I
would scream at him,” she remembers. “He
was sweet but the outfi t left nothing to the
imagination. I was essentially screaming at
the Serbian guy most of the time.”
While the immediate draw for a lot of
monster movie fans will be the angry animal“I’M NO ONE’S
GIRLFRIEND...
SHE’S A KICK-
ASS CHICK”
K AYA SCO DEL ARIOBIG MOVIE
Crawl034 | WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK
is not a movie about a giant monster,
something that has crawled up out of the
bayou, never before seen by human eyes.
No, nature’s oldest killing machine is plenty
scary enough already. “I didn’t want to make
a monster movie,” he explains. “I wanted
to make something really, really scary but I
didn’t want to make a monster movie. I didn’t
want to create giant alligators that would
not be believable. I wanted the story to be in
the realm of possibilities. There is a realistic
way to create them and I wanted to bring
that hyperreal feeling. If you look online,
you can see hours of alligator or crocodile
footage. Most of them will be boring because
it’s just sitting in the sun and not moving
but some of them are just the most scary,
dreadful attacks, vicious movements and you
understand why this creature [has] barely
changed for the last 16 million years. They
are effi cient in their design, they are like
killing machines, they are very territorial
and I didn’t need anything else.”
However, going as real as possible actually
meant that creating a CG alligator was
the only option. “I couldn’t fi nd a way to
do animatronics that would re-create the
accurate movement of these alligators,” the
director explains. “And today when you look
at what you can do in CGI, it’s spectacular.
with the teeth, what will keep them in their
seats is the quality of the lead performance.
It doesn’t matter how impressive your CGI
is if we’re not invested, and Aja tells us that
he knew Scodelario would be the perfect fi t
for this role. “In the end it’s not about the
quality of the CGI or the set or the storm,
it’s all about the actors and I knew that
everything was about who is going to play
[Haley] and who is going to be able to carry
the movie on her shoulders,” he explains.
“I’ve been a fan of Kaya sinceSkins. She
was an interesting choice because she had
that kind of determination and the look that
even in the darkness, doesn’t give up. She
incarnates that kind of fi ght and resistance,
and she’s also very physical when it comes
to fi ghting alligators! She’s really good in the
movie. And knowing what she went through
making it, because we were in the middle of
it with all the wind, storm, rain water all the
time...Without her I would never have been
able to make it.”
“I’d look for movies that had strong women
in the centre, and when this project came
about I started talking to the producers about
it and then the director, and had a discussion
about [how we could be inspired by other
women] in this genre,” explains Scodelario.
“Sarah Connor is my hero. She’s the mostKaya Scodelario was
excited to carry a fi lm.