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CRAWL (2019) is a horror/thriller written by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, and directed by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D), with a simple premise: If battling a hurricane wasn’t enough, what if our movie’s heroes also had to deal with terrifying creatures of the natural world? THRASH (2026), written and directed by Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow, Violent Night), rips off the exact same premise and makes a change that is ultimately just cosmetic, while sacrificing tension and character development for ramped-up action.
In Crawl, Kaya Scodelario stars as Haley, a competitive University of Florida swimmer who receives the call from her sister that she hasn’t heard from their estranged father (Barry Pepper), despite the Category 5 hurricane headed for their small home town. Haley makes the ill-advised trek into Coral Lake and discovers her father trapped in the crawl space of their former family home, and hunted by a pair of ill-tempered alligators. Together, the pair must find a way to escape the crawl space before the waters rise so they can hopefully signal for help.
Thrash follows Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), who gets caught in the hurricane threatening Annieville, South Carolina after she is called into work. Eight and a half months pregnant and alone after the father has left her, Lisa fears losing her job if she doesn’t stay. Meanwhile, young Dakota (Whitney Peak) is alone in town because her growing agoraphobia in the wake of her mother’s death won’t allow her to leave, even as the situation worsens. Of course, these two ladies will wind up working together to survive the storm, but, to complicate things, as the waters rise the town is being overrun by a pack of bull sharks.
Extremely similar setups – waters rising, apex predators circling – but these films diverge in the execution. Aja keeps Crawl lean and scary, focusing on developing his two stars into full-fledged characters, and letting the tension of their situation breathe. A few other characters are briefly introduced into the film – a trio of looters, a pair of police officers – but as they quickly succumb to the gators, they serve just to underscore the peril facing Haley and her dad.
Meanwhile, while Thrash is a similarly lean length (both movies clock in under 90 minutes), Wirkola packs his film with a bevy of characters and perilous situations. There are three foster children (Alyla Browne, Stacy Clausen, Dante Ubaldi) under the “care” of abusive Mr. Olsen (Matt Nable), who has refused to leave town out of sheer stubbornness. And Djimon Hounsou stars as Dr. Dale Edwards, a marine biologist who has been tracking the unusual movement patterns of the sharks. He happens to be the uncle of orphaned Dakota, and takes up with an ambitious news reporter (Andrew Lees) so he can get into Annieville and rescue his niece.
With so many more characters comes the opportunity for Wirkola to craft more deadly scenarios, and the pacing of Thrash is frenetic. The film zips from one small-town shark encounter to the next, scarcely taking the time to breathe. The result is consistently entertaining, but not overly scary, particularly as the fates of most of Wirkola’s characters become pretty predictable.
Aja, meanwhile, consistently ramps up the tension in Crawl. There’s plenty of action, but also time taken to let the story breathe, and help the audience care about the characters at the center of it.
Both movies are brisk, don’t overstay their welcome, and should satisfy fans of gnarly creature action or tales of survival. But there’s no doubt that Crawl‘s alligators take a bigger bite of proper storytelling, while the sharks just kind of Thrash around, making noise.
Crawl is currently available to stream on Paramount+. Thrash is recently released on Netflix.
