Crawlspace

I saw this film at the Brussels fantastic film festival 2013 (BIFFF), in a very very late nightly session starting 1 AM. Myself and the rest of the audience was very well awake, however. Something very sinister was going to be shown, having to do with a clandestine research project. We learned all this from the synopsis on the festival website. It also refers to former experience of this director when cooperating in famous productions. We learned also that he formed an "incredible" team of film makers around him to create this Crawlspace.

From the very start the tone is set when we see the briefing of a soldier team in an airplane on their way to the research facility in question. Photo's of "prisoners" are shown, with the explicit instruction to shoot them on sight. Implicit suggestion is that the prisoners are the cause that the facility lost contact with the outside world (what else could it be??). I know it is not customary to challenge military orders within a briefing, but this is too easy, too black&white and thus not very believable.

The first scene within the facility follows a woman with a brace band showing Eve as her name (with orange pants, hence a "prisoner"). It is made very obvious that she does not recognize that name as her own. She succeeds very well in finding her way in the narrow "facilities" spaces while evading encounters with unknown adversaries (on whose side, we can only guess).

The soldiers are divided in three teams when entering the facility. They carry electronic gadgets with plans of the building, and a lot of weaponry including hand grenades (not very appropriate in that environment, but I'm no expert). What seems to be a well coordinated military operation, soon turns into disorder when unexpected things start happening. When one of the teams meet Eve, their leader Romeo suddenly remembers her as his former wife, who was assumed drowned. We viewers are at a loss, as are his colleagues, since Eve's photo was shown during the briefing where he did not recognize her face. This is the first hint that something very peculiar is going on.

The story line deteriorates soon after this, when impossible things start happening (like an over-sized gorilla suddenly turning up), combined with testosterone driven actions by the military without a proper plan how these actions can advance their mission. Especially when they encounter some scientists, it seems that who is the fastest in pointing a gun is automatically right and the pointees are automatically wrong. And a lot of yelling, of course, all of that leading us nowhere.

I don't think it has any use to condense the story further, since logic is lost from this moment on and a lot of Action (with capital A, no sex) takes over. Many things are going on in subsequent scenes, some of them clarifying the underlying plot but others sowing doubts about any consistent plot. Given all that, I have no firm opinion on casting and acting.

All in all, I may assume I was expecting too much, given the synopsis on the festival website. I may stand alone in my negative experience, however, because of some applause coming from the rest of the audience when the credits appeared. Anyway, whatever its faults, it was not a boring experience. Something was happening all the time, thereby giving us no reason to consult our watches. So it may be considered entertainment without pretenses. But the missed chances with the plot that deserved much better treatment, together with a lot of unnecessary illogicalities, make this film into something not suitable for the true SciFi fan.

In 1966 the Australian and U.S. Governments established Pine Gap, a top secret research facility in the remote Australian outback. Fifteen hours ago all contact with the facility was lost, cause unknown. Then there are messages telling that the prisoners have escaped. Three helicopters with a group of elite soldiers are sent to rescue the scientists and eliminate the dangerous prisoners. Commander Romeo (Ditch Davey) leads the team formed by Fourpack (Eddie Baroo), Wiki (Peta Sergeant) and Kid (Fletcher Humphrys) that is mysteriously attacked by strange creatures in the underground. When Romeo meets the amnesic prisoner Eve (Amber Clayton), he protects her compromising their mission. When his team questions who Eve is, Romeo tells that she is his wife that died years ago in Paris. When they find the scientists Darious Caesar (Nicholas Belt), Emily (Ngaire Dawn Fair) and Matthews (Samuel Johnson), they learn that the scientists are developing powerful psychic soldiers in the facility. Who is Eve? Will the soldiers succeed in their assignment?

"Crawlspace" is a claustrophobic movie with a promising idea, good acting but poor beginning and conclusion. The story begins without any development, with a group of soldiers breaking in a facility in the outback of Australia. The viewer does not know whether the story happens in the present, past or future; how is the government of this society; and who are the prisoners (criminals, political). The action is reasonable and when Eve opens the body bag and is surprised with her discovery, the viewer never knows who was there (might be the alien in her recollection, but it is not clear). What Romeo did to his wife and why is also confused and not clear. Last but not the least, the conclusion is totally disappointing. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Fortaleza Secreta" ("Secret Fortress")

Science fiction films are a tough genre to get right. There are those that go full on space style and others that just take a more subtle approach. With the latest film from Australia Crawlspace it takes on the more strange and unknown in regards to strange experiments. Could this be one of those that delivers something special or is it just another in a long line of failed attempts to a difficult genre.

Crawlspace follows a group of elite soldiers sent to infiltrate and extract a science team from an underground military compound. When they encounter and unknown woman with no memory things go from bad to worse as they realize something more sinister is happening. The overall film of the movie plays like Aliens with the soldiers running through various tunnels hunting and being hunted around every corner. While there is a bit of a mystery to the story most of it plays pretty straight forward and pretty well. The acting is good for most of the film, with just a few moments here and there that are questionable. The visuals to the film give it a gritty and dark tone that really fits well with the overall story. The first half of the film takes you on a fun ride and delivers a really cool creature, but then the film shifts into a whole different direction. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but that first part was so cool and creative it would have made for a much better overall film. As it stands though the rest of the film still works well, but does manage to get a bit convoluted at times trying to twist and turn things for a more creative direction. This never makes the film hard to understand, just doesn't always make a lot of sense in why they are doing it.

Overall this is a pretty decent action science fiction film. There is plenty of action and complexity to the story to keep things entertaining, but given the addition to more of the cool creature they delivered early on this movie could have been so much better. If you are a fan of films like Aliens, then you may want to give Crawlspace a chance.

IMDb truly baffles me sometimes. The score for Crawlspace stands at 4.8 at the time of writing which is ridiculously low for such a competent, not to mention fun, piece of film making.

Premise - a military team is sent in to an underground complex ("Australia's version of Area 51" one character notes) with the mission of eliminating a group of escaped prisoners and saving the scientists. Of course it all goes wrong, and that's about all you need to know.

No, actually what you need to know is that this hangs together way better than 90% of the other Aliens derived plots out there. The similarities to Aliens are evident at every turn, from the way the military team interacts with one another (much like James Cameron's colonial marines), to the motion trackers and a lead protagonist who bears more than an uncanny resemblance to Michael Biehn. Sure it rips of Aliens, but it rips it off well and if like me you've been waiting for over 25 years for a film that had that Aliens vibe going for it then you will love this.

There's another layer to Crawlspace too though - a pretty intriguing psychological mystery plot woven through that hides just enough answers to keep your interest. But, like all good old school movies, it doesn't try to get too clever and the end is obvious but deeply entertaining including a couple of kiss-off lines that I said right along with the actors and then grinned my head off.

I dunno, I suppose kids these days want something different from movies than we did in my generation. When I go into a sci fi horror movie about soldiers vs underground monsters, all I really want is some gore, some action, and some entertainment and Crawlspace delivered on all accounts.

4.8 - no way. This is a solid 6. But I'm giving it an 8 just to counterbalance some of the insanity.

It is amazing how low budget movie from OZ, with hardly known performers can deliver such entertainment. I am not going overboard and say it was an Oscar material but the movie kept me interested up to the end, I have read some of the reviews on IMDb and to be honest I was disappointed because other reviewers decided to give negative review just because they can. The acting was very convincing as for the story line; the movie makers could have elaborated on the main two chatterer past to make sense of some parts of the movie. This movie wont make it to the Oscar but by its own right is good entertainment; I know that because while watching some boring movies I tend to do something else or my mind wander away, this one kept me on my seat to the end.