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Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Crawl or Die' (2014)

'Gratuitous Booty Shot, the Movie'

By Reed AlexanderPublished 5 years ago 3 min read
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Uncorked Studios actually managed to produce a low budget film that was pretty fucking good. It's not just good on the curve of being low budget. What I mean is, I'm not being nice because of their shoe string budget. They clearly had nothing to work with and they made it work. I have some complaints, of course, and this movie was by no means perfect, but I'd actually recommend it to all my fellow horror heads.

Let's talk about why. The setting was, what, three tunnels and two rooms? But what they accomplished with those meager sets was a terrifying sense of claustrophobia. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the female lead "Tank" didn't get hung up multiple times during shoots. Some of the sets you could sure as fuck get stuck in. Some of them would straight up cause me to have cave shock. I actually wondered to myself if the woman who plays Tank goes cave crawling. She seemed almost at home in some of the most suffocating conditions. She needs serious respect for what she was put through in this movie.

The story seemed needlessly convoluted. Tank and her squad have to deliver the only fertile woman on Earth to Earth Two. I mean, the characters needed pretty solid motivation, it just seemed needlessly specific. They could have just had them crash land on the planet on a standard mission. Not a real complaint, mind you, as it doesn't detract from the story. Just seemed odd.

The acting ain't half bad. There were some really gruelingly tense moments. It's on par with what I expect out of horror and better than I'd expect for low budget.

The practical FX were actually pretty solid. I was impressed. As a creature feature goes, shoe string budget horror usually tends to phone it in. What they didn't spend on the setting, they must have blown on the rubber monster. It looked solid.

This movie is probably only for horror heads, but it's definitely worth it.

SPOILERS!!!

They didn't have enough victims for this movie. The first three get picked off in the first 30 minutes and there's only five major characters. Not a lot to work with there. When it's down to the last two, there's still 45 minutes left of just crawling through ever-narrowing tubes. Now, here's the thing, this actually worked out okay. There's such a sense of desperation for the last two characters that the time is used very well, even if it's dragged out considerably. While a good 20 minutes of the last half of the movie is just the two remaining characters crawling for their lives, it somehow doesn't seem padded. The sense of helplessness and tension never relaxes and the setting, just makes it even more suffocating. So, while there isn't a lot to it, the simplicity of it is sort of perfect.

One thing annoyed the shit out of me about the rubber monster. There's a point where the tunnels and crawl spaces are clearly too small to accommodate its size anymore. It just starts to get unrealistic with how easily the damn thing keeps up with Tank. Now, this shouldn't have been an issue if they delivered the rubber monster I was promised. The cover seems to show more than one of these creatures, and they appear to be much smaller. If this was an infestation of little flesh eating creepy crawlies, it probably would have worked out better and made more sense.

The rubber monster design was also a bit of a letdown. From early views of the creature, you get the sense that it's some kind of arachnid. Kinda like a big fucking daddy long legs with a mouth rather than fangs. But the big reveal shows just another uninspired Alien ripoff. For a second, the damn thing looked like it was about to produce an inner jaw as well. We chewed through enough Alien wannabes back in the 80s with titles like Creature, Extro II, and Creepozoids. Can't really keep doing this.

All these things considered, and a few lines that were outright painful, this movie was solid horror and a lot of fun.

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About the Creator

Reed Alexander

I'm a horror author and foulmouthed critic of all things horror. New reviews posted every Monday.

@ReedsHorror on TikTok, Threads, Instagram, YouTube, and Mastodon.

Check out my books on Godless: https://godless.com/products/reed-alexander

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