Crawl or Die

Just how on earth is this receiving the high marks on IMDb? I can only imagine it's friends and family of the film maker and cast that are writing them because the reviews do not reflect the quality of this film. It's a badly scripted and badly realised mish mash of influences such as Alien, Aliens and The Descent but without any of the things that made those memorable such as a cohesive plot or character development.

The characters are so one dimensional as to be non existent and are mostly confined to a couple of sentences along with a grunt or two. The main protagonist is a poor copy of Tank Girl and seems to think that simply curling your lip is an accurate portrayal of being tough.

The plot has very big holes and inconsistencies which I don't believe were deliberate but rather that the writer couldn't be bothered to actually be doing with such things and believe that the action would carry it along. That may have been true if the pacing didn't veer from confused to drawn out. This wouldn't work even as a poorly executed video game. The one thing it does do fairly reasonably is a claustrophobic cinematography but this is a one trick pony and wears thin very quickly. If this had been edited down to a 20 minute short it may have had its merits but at its current length this film shows its inadquecies in a woeful manner for all to see.

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery but in this case I really would change that to insult. I don't mind no budget films and love experimental, challenging, indie and art house films but this fails on every level leaving the viewer robbed of the time watching this that could have been used more constructively - for example watching paint dry.

I don't want to be rude but this was really a weak try. Okay, I understand that it's a low budget non-blockbuster b-movie but come on... Even with this amount of resources something better could have been accomplished. The monster is a weak alien redo. The actors are okay but the script is really nothing worth mentioning. The whole movie could have told its content in 25 minutes, from which 20 minutes is 'girl crawling in a hole'. The rest is just repeated lines/acts of the actors and too long cuts of the same things, like movements, etc. The whole thing becomes cheesy and boring because of this. Also, the 'monster does not die of 1000 bullet hits but from a small fire' is really out of fashion since the 80's. Disappointing. Maybe next time they can come up with something more interesting.

"Crawl or Die" is essentially a massive snoozefest, especially because everything that is going on is a dwindling number of people who crawl around in confined spaces that progressively gets smaller and smaller, and the people are chased by a creature that looks like a poor man's rendering of the icon creature from "Alien".

Yep, that was basically the entire storyline. The story was simple to the point of being braindead.

Acting-wise, well it was adequate. I mean, what talent does it take to crawl around in confined spaces that get more and more narrow. And there were very little dialogue in the movie as well.

I will say that the camera-work throughout the movie was alright, and the editing was alright as well. And these were actually the two brightest moments of the entire movie.

As mentioned above, the creature was a rip off of the iconic alien creature from the "Alien" movies, from the spines along the back, to the tail, and to the head. Except that it was a poor man's version of the Alien creature.

"Crawl or Die" was 86 minutes of life that I will never get back, and I can't think of a single reason for recommending this movie to anyone.

Surprisingly good production value in this tense story of claustrophobic horror survival.

One killer heroine called Tank, in the tone of Ellen Ripley, stands out as a tough warrior with both brains and beauty. The audience is treated with intense action scenes, gory deaths & sweet shots of Nicole Alonso's fabulous, scantily clad backside. She is a producer of the film so she doesn't mind! I would recommend this film to any horror or sci-fi fan out there, especially those who enjoy the film Alien. The plot is exciting, the effort of the characters is exhausting, and the path to freedom is dark and treacherous.

This is an example of a smaller studio sci-fi/horror film done right. I like it so much that this review was written now years after my initial viewing, and directly after my second viewing. It's just one that stuck with me, and maybe you too.

Unfortunately it doesn't here.

A group of people must negotiate an ever narrowing series of underground tunnels to escape an unseen threat.

There are not too may redeeming features I can write about this movie, the script is poor, so are sound, lighting, special effects. We the viewer are supposed to feel claustrophobic throughout, it fails miserably.

The one plus point of this entire experience is the female lead (Nicole Alonso), whom single handedly carries the entire feature on her shoulders.

There are apparently two sequels to this in the pipeline (no pun intended), if any improvement is to be made, a huge injection of cash is needed.

In short, if you like movies with plenty of close ups of nostrils and butts this may be for you, if not, then give it a miss.

4/10 from me, 3 stars for Nicole Alonso, 1 for everything else.