Crawl Review: Taut, Minimalist Aussie Thriller Delivers The Basic Goods
rating: 3
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Paul China's feature debut Crawl aims to do for the Australian Outback what the Coen Brothers have done for America's Deep South, pulling back the unassuming veneer to reveal an underbelly of savage violence, shady deals and sleaze. Though minimalist to a fault, there's plenty of tension to keep this grisly Aussie thriller bounding along. It all begins, as it inevitably does, with a murder. A man known only as "the Croatian" (George Shevtsov) arrives in the sleepy town to perform a hit on a local mechanic whose business deal went South (no pun intended). Meanwhile, Marilyn (Georgina Haig), a beautiful young woman, finishes her shift at work and heads home, fully expecting her long-time boyfriend, Travis, to propose to her when he arrives back at their shared abode. She waits, and she waits, but of course, a fatal car accident ensures that the man arriving at her door next won't be her boyfriend, but the Croatian himself... It's easy to see where Crawl is going for most of its 80-minute run-time, but despite some occasional indulgence in bombast (the score is a little intrusive at times), China's film drips in quiet suspense rather than heaping on set-pieces or expository dialogue. The first half has us wondering quite how these characters will be brought colliding together, and once the scenario has established itself, we then wonder how Marilyn is going to extricate herself from it.