Director: Paul China
Cast: Georgina Haig, George Shevtsov, Paul Holmes.
Running Time: 80 minutes
Certificate:15
Synopsis: A Croatian hit man dressed as a cowboy whacks a local mechanic for a sleazy bar owner. One of the bar staff goes home to meet her returning boyfriend, hoping he’ll propose. After a tragic road accident, the cowboy and the bar girl find themselves in a Hellish game of cat and mouse.
CRAWL has been compared to BLOOD SIMPLE and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. For a first time director to find themselves squaring up to the mighty Coen Brothers, that’s a big deal and a real compliment, even if it is completely unwarranted. CRAWL maybe cosmetically similar to the work of those brothers grim and share some themes, but it lacks their knack for dialogue, their spark and invention and the overall quality they bring. That may be harsh on directorial debutant Paul China, and he does show potential, but the Coen-comparisons his film banks on will only serve to disappoint and do the guy, and his work, no favours.
The Stranger (George Shevtsov) is clearly reminiscent of NCfOM’s Javier Bardem, with his unassuming demeanour, enigmatic background and cold, calculated approach to murder. He’s just a professional doing a job and is perfectly happy to put holes in heads for the right price, or to get where he’s going a little quicker. Shevtsov does just fine with what he has, but his minimal dialogue and proclivity for pregnant pauses fail to build his mystique, but instead create moments of unnatural, truncated conversation that you wish would just hurry up. His scenes with sleazeball Slim (Paul Holmes) really emphasise how weak the script is, in what China presumably hoped would be awkward and tense moments. Alas, far from biting our nails, the assembled audience were checking our watches. For an 80 minute film, that’s not good. That’s not good at all.
Holmes really gives it some as Slim, the lying, plotting, lecherous owner of the local tavern. But all he gets to do is sit behind a desk sweating and making unfunny witticisms. The sequence in which he asserts his power over a barmaid named Holly (Lauren Dillon) is particularly jarring, and not in the way the director intended. I’m sure China wouldn’t want to eroticise a scene with dubious consent, but he should have focused more on Holly’s reactions and less on her body, in particular her bare bottom. The looming angle which tracks her as she crawls across the office floor towards her tormentor’s lap seems to indicate the director’s desire to titillate rather than unsettle, which makes for unpleasant viewing, all the more so because the scene is quite unnecessary. We already know Slim is a killer, a drug pusher and an all round nasty piece of work. A seemingly tacked on spanking scene serves no purpose other than to humiliate a female character and to see the second naked arse in the course of the film. Both, of course, belong to women, who are shown as doting (almost obsessive) girlfriends, victims or cleavages with voices.
This is a pity, as Georgina Haig’s central performance of Marilyn is actually really good. True, the character is SO desperate for her boyfriend to propose it’s almost alarming, but Haig gives the character a humanity and subtlety which is almost too good for this film. She gives the terrorised Marilyn a believability that is absolutely essential in this kind of film, because if you don’t care about the principal victim in a horror or thriller, then we might as well all go home. And boy that was tempting, mainly due to the appalling music by Christopher Gordon.
And that’s the main problem. With the exception of two very specific scenes (the bathroom denouement and the squeaky door), every tense moment is absolutely ruined by Gordon’s incessant strings. Whenever Marilyn is investigating the haunting silence in her house or being stalked by the murderous cowboy, Gordon’s faux-Hitchcockian score utterly drains any tension away. He over-eggs the pudding so much that it almost views like a parody. The ridiculously over-the-top music plays so often that I thought we were watching SCARY MOVIE 5, I half expected The Stranger to be mowed down by a grand piano rolling down the stairs. Had the film makers been brave enough to let the scenes play out to silence, they would have been unbearably tense. This did not come to pass and the stifled giggles around the cinema did not indicate an air of dread.
Still though, let’s not forget that CRAWL is Paul China’s first film. And though it’s not particularly good, there are signs that he can learn from his mistakes and move on to make something inventive and hopefully enjoyable. If he decides to carry on with horror, he should lay off the pointless degradation of women, not let music ruin anything potentially scary and stick with Georgina Haig, she’s one to watch. Even if the film isn’t.
CRAWL is written and directed by Paul China and stars Georgina Haig, George Shevtsov and Paul Holmes. It is released on DVD, Blu-Ray and at selected cinemas on 25th February.
