Crawl or Die

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.

First: I don't want to be too hard on the producers of this video. At least they're not out robbing banks and make an honest living trying -as best as they know how- to bring us entertainment. I would give them 10 stars for that if it were a criteria for rating here. But alas! It is not.

The earth is overrun by the "OVT" virus (Whatever the f!!ck that is) and a special forces unit is given the task of escorting -in their commander's words- "the last non-infected, virus-free, fertile woman alive" to Earth 2. Now he could have just said "non-infected" or "virus-free" but repeatedly chose to compound those two terms (Maybe he thought his team was stupid and wasn't taking any chances in case they didn't understand the meaning of one term?).

This movie is brought to us, we are told at the start, by "Backyard Films" which is something I can well believe. I couldn't make sense of the action in the first part of this video (I can't call this a "movie" folks). Speaking of action, the last two-thirds of the movie is spent in narrow underground tubes or tunnels. One is of some kind of plastic or metal and the other is soil. It gets increasingly cramped. So much so, they can only move an inch at a time WHEN THEY MOVE. If you can't run, kick, jump, shoot -where's the entertainment? What we see mostly is people inching or crawling along like this dull video. After inching forward about 3 inches, the lead chick stops, grimaces, looks around, musters up some incredible inner reserve and moves 3 more inches. And so on, and so on. I kid you not, this is a huge chunk of this "movie".

Maybe the people who made this video knew it was going to get dull once they got to the narrow tunnels, so just before she goes in, the lead Ops chick who has a blonde punk mohawk hair style, and wears knee-high fetish boots with thick rubber soles, takes off her pants and gives it to the doctor to rip into strips for bandage for the injured non-infected "plus" virus-free woman. She's now left wearing some ultra short shorts (At this point I perk up). This could get interesting if the camera guy or gal does his or her job properly. Unfortunately the camera person was "gun-shy", so to speak and didn't give me the angles and close-ups I wanted. Maybe the Backyard people didn't want to appear exploitive. In which case: Why use all of the punk Ops pants for bandage? Could have just used the legs. But they had her strip down to her short shorts and then chickened out once she got in the tunnels.

Now before anyone thinks of me as base, let me say this: If you're going to confine a woman so she can't run, jump, shoot, face-off with that cheap Alien knock-off of a creature -what else is there? If you want to keep at least "some" of your audience, you might as well use your camera to lovingly study the beauty of the female form as she pushes, struggles, and wiggles thru some very tight places. Love, Boloxxxi.

"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.