It Crawls Beneath

(2022) They Crawl Beneath THRILLER HORROR

Uncle Bill Moritz (Michael Paré) gets himself bitten by a worm-like creature, and thinks nothing of it when he swats it off his leg. Bill's nephew, Danny Moritz (Joseph Almani) then picks it up and puts it into a jar so that his ex can have it examined. And when Danny's ex leaves a message on his phone regarding the infected and dangerous worm, he does not even answer it. And then when both Bill and Danny are working underneath their vintage car, an earthquake begins to erupt. And if anyone were to see this, Danny had enough time to pull himself out of their before he was being crushed, and at the same time pull his uncle out of their as well. But what does he do, he just continues to leave his legs underneath their, so that the car is able to crush his legs. For the next hour or so, he does a lot of reflecting self evaluating on his personal life, who eventually realizes that Bill was not his uncle after all but that he may be his actual father after all. We also get to see how both him and his ex Gwen Bishop (Karlee Eldridge) and the reason why his police officer duties were placing a strain on their relationship. And the reason is hogwash, as despite being injured trying to prevent a robbery from happening that he got himself injured, but yet he still wants to return to his duties. As far as I know, officers are not permitted to continue to work if he or she were injured on the job, the protocol was that they are supposed to stay home and collect workers compensation. This movie does not appear to acknowledge that, anticipating anyone who watches this to be gullible idiots without knowing anything.

On one scene the worm like creature was supposed to be afraid of the light except that at the beginning when the doctor studied it, it cocooned into something else. And yet light was pointed to it throughout the entire time before it killed the doctor. The ending was dumb as Danny's partner, Holder (Christopher M. Dukes) could have used his own squad car to ram through the garage door or use the squad car to pull the door open. Do we do not even get to see the worm who killed the doctor at the beginning destroyed. The worm killed the dog around the area but the dog's owner, Ed is nowhere in sight nor does he matter anymore. And despite officer Danny himself being trapped with the worms, not one of their fellow officers ever consider slipping him their revolver underneath to shoot them down while many of them were trying to lift the door open to pull him out. One of the more dumber and convoluted movies ever.

I had never heard about this 2022 horror movie titled "It Crawls Beneath" (aka "They Crawl Beneath") before stumbling upon it by random chance. So I had literally no idea what I was in for here, but the synopsis for the movie sounded interesting enough. And actually with it being a horror movie, then of course I had to watch the movie.

While the concept idea behind "It Crawls Beneath" was interesting and had potential, then writer Tricia Aurand only managed to put together a script and storyline that was subpar. Sure, "It Crawls Beneath" was watchable enough for what it was, but this movie just simply didn't bring much of anything to the table. And I have to say that the narrative in the movie was too mundane, slow paced and there just simply wasn't enough of anything interesting happening to keep 88 minutes of the movie entertaining.

The acting performances in the movie were fair enough, but the actors and actresses literally had a very little to work with in terms of a properly constructed storyline, interesting characters or riveting dialogue. The only familiar face on the screen here was Michael Paré.

Visually then "It Crawls Beneath" sort of felt like something that had crawled out of the late 1980s or early 1990s, pun intended here. The special effects, while suitable enough for this particular slow paced and uneventful movie, just didn't feel like something grand or spectacular, and definitely didn't feel like something at the top of what effects are like in 2022.

I managed to sit through director Dale Fabrigar's horror movie here, but I wasn't particularly entertained. This is not a horror movie that I would recommend for horror aficionados, nor is it a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of "It Crawls Beneath" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

Not any good? Well, I had a laugh alright, when I started watching this movie, because it was so utterly terrible, that I actually thought this might be a parody, a conscious attempt to make a terrible horror movie that was meant to evoke laughter instead of horror. But ofcourse this wasnt the case!

The bad: this is NOT horror. This is NOT thrilling for one second.

What is it then? Amateur hour. We get to see a guy laying trapped under a car for an hour long. Well, you might think, isnt that dramatic? NOPE. The "actors" starring in this product are C-listed actors, who usually only would get roles in tv commercials or tv soap series, wherein any acting capabilities are not important.

Bad writing, bad acting, bad sound mixing. I think the worst part was the main character being trapped under a car for about 20 minutes of the movie. That was just dumb writing, maybe it was the only way they could fit in a monologue for the main character? Yeah, skip this.

The writing really tried to add some depth to this but all of the character plots given were just cliche or boring. What about the monsters? Confined to one location making things even more uneventful and boring. The pace was slow, I skipped through swaths of it just to get to something of actual interest so least to say I watched a good 30 minutes of this movie and that was still more than enough.

Very low budget, so one has to evaluate it based on what they did on a low budget. Practical effects, and having most of the movie take place in one area saves money. The acting wasn't great, nor was it as if random people were hired who never did any acting before, so most of it was not mere reading a script. The Danny character is a bit of a puzzle. When he finally gets a phone call, on a phone that is at very low battery level, he decides to go off on a tangent rather then making sure he gets help before the phone dies. That can be looked upon as wasted screen time, or padding to make sure the film was as long as promised. In the biology lab, the only science books on the counter were physics books, which would have been out of place so that is a bit sloppy for the props people. The film probably delivered what they wanted it to deliver, but it still is a very forgettable film. It is not so over the top that it is a parody, nor is there any reason for the creatures being what they were. It is a dull movie, as Danny is a dull person. It is interesting as the pistol he has is referenced to Jose Wales. In that movie's background info, that civil war pistol was as likely to kill the shooter as kill the enemy! It was prone to misfire.