Crawlspace

Although this movie may have borrowed a bit heavily from a few better made sci-fi films, (and you can pick and choose as you see fit where hints of 'Aliens', 'Scanners', 'Resident Evil', and 'Doom' is sprinkled in throughout), this film still manages to thoroughly entertain throughout the length of the film and even provide a fairly decent, "Hmmm, I definitely wasn't expecting that" conclusion at the end of the film. Usually, if a sci-fi movie doesn't begin to deliver a believable plot, good character acting, and more importantly, strong, well thought out dialogue within the first 15-30 minutes of the film, I tend to find other things to do while watching many movies, i.e., multi-task, if I just don't turn off the movie entirely or watch something else altogether, but this movie did manage to keep my attention focused from beginning to end, . . . even though there were a couple of times where I had to pause, rewind, and playback just to make sure I didn't miss an important scene or clue in the movie, but overall a fairly good and entertaining movie!

A special forces unit, sent to infiltrate Pine Gap Australia's top secret underground military compound, comes under attack from unknown forces.

Terrible effects, little use of science fiction in the plot, and just your average sort of experience makes this a typical lower budget action film. I am sorry, Australia, but you are going to have to try harder than this. We are already flooded with worthless films in America, and you cannot compete with the sheer number of throwaway pieces of trash we produce. (I am not proud of this.)

Most unfortunate, someone named this film "Crawlspace". While that may be a valid name for what takes place in the majority of this film, it is already the name of a better than average 1980s slasher film. If you are going to reuse a name, pick one that you can actually improve upon.

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.

The plot is quite simple but powerful. It is intelligent from the beginning trying to show you very little as the movie goes along. I was very surprised with acting in general, cinematography, art, editing and music. But perhaps the thing I liked the most is all references to Area 51, and conspiracy theories. From EVE to Genesis project, and quoting the Soviet Union paranormal experiments during the cold war which, now we know, were actually real, at least in their intent. I also enjoyed the several classic science fiction movies homages like James Cameron's "Aliens", Roger Donaldson's "Species", the Resident Evil games and even Steve Barker's "Outpost" if you want, and some others. Perhaps the main issue that generates dislike is the lack of dynamic and rhythmic editing during the 2nd part of the film. The climax to be precise. Nevertheless I think it is a good film for those hardcore science fiction fans that are always searching for new productions.

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.