Let’s be honest, it’s hard to enter the new movie “Crawl” without some level of snark and skepticism. I mean we are talking about people being terrorized by man-eating alligators during a Category 5 hurricane. On concept alone it would be easy to dismiss as a throwaway B-movie maybe worth renting after you’ve seen everything else in your local Redbox.

But oh how I love it when a movie surprises me. “Crawl” has no ambitions of being anything other than what it is. It just does what it does incredibly well. It’s a tightly-wound, no-nonsense thriller; a throwback creature-feature that utilizes every second of its lean 88-minute runtime.

The first hint that this could actually be pretty good was seeing Sam Raimi’s name attached. He produces alongside the film’s writer/director Alexandre Aja. Their story is light but their characters are given a surprising amount of depth considering how much time they spend in peril. Family dynamics are laid out and we get enough personal stakes to make us genuinely care about them.

Kaya Scodelario drives the movie with an intensely committed lead performance. She plays Haley, a swimmer for the University of Florida who gets a call from her concerned sister who hasn’t been able to reach their father (played by Barry Pepper). He isn’t answering his phone and with a massive hurricane bearing down his window to evacuate is shrinking.

Haley agrees to check on her dad before she leaves town. She discovers him injured in a crawlspace underneath their old family lake house. It doesn’t take long for her to find out what caused his injury – a massive alligator under the house lurking in the shadows. Trapped there with her father, a growing number of gators, and rising flood waters from the hurricane sets the table for a tension-soaked (and sometimes bloody) survival-horror thrill ride.

One of the first things to impress me was Aja’s camera particularly when shooting in tight spaces. For a movie like this it’s imperative that the audience feel they are in those spaces with the characters. The danger needs to feel palpable. Aja’s camera pulls us in with great effect whether he’s shooting in claustrophobic spaces below the house or giving us tense underwater shots. Combine that with fantastic work from production designer Alan Gilmore who offers up some visually impressive and thoroughly convincing storm effects.

“Crawl” works well because it embraces its simplicity and sticks to its premise. There’s no needless filler or pointless melodrama. Instead we get exciting thrills, economic storytelling, and just enough character development to make us care. And with such good visual technique and devoted central performances, you can’t help but be immersed regardless of how silly the whole thing sounds.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

Am I wrong or are we witnessing the resurgence of the slasher sub-genre into mainstream horror? I first noticed it with the tame but surprisingly fun “Happy Death Day”. But it really stood out is when Hollywood starting bringing back old franchises. Last year “Halloween” was a big hit and a few rumors are swirling about a possible “Scream” sequel. But if there was one series I never expected to see back on a big screen it was “Child’s Play”. Yet here we are.

I remember when the original “Child’s Play” released in 1988. It was a unique and playful entry into a horror genre that frankly was growing a little stale. It was easy to laugh along with the movie but not with the host of terrible sequels that followed. Yet 2017’s unwatchably bad “Cult of Chucky” showed it still had life as a straight-to-streaming series. But now it’s actually back in theaters, remade and rebooted for a new audience. At least I think it’s for a new audience. I certainly wasn’t longing for a new installment.

This is the second feature film for Norwegian director Lars Klevberg. He teams with first-time screenwriter Tyler Burton Smith to completely reinvent and modernize the Chucky origin story. Buddi dolls now do a lot more than just talk. These versions are high-tech Alexa-like companions who can connect to numerous other devices created and sold by the multinational Kaslan Corporation (the ‘tech is scary’ and ‘beware of big business’ messaging is pretty obvious).

Also gone is the goofy serial killer possession angle. Instead a disgruntled worker at a Vietnamese sweatshop removes a Buddi doll’s safety protocols in retaliation for being fired. The doll ships overseas and ends up in the hands of a retail clerk and single mother named Karen (Audrey Plaza). She gives the doll as an early birthday present to her son Andy (Gabriel Bateman) who is having trouble adapting to their new neighborhood. He names it…well, you know.

Despite something clearly being off with Chucky (deviously voiced by a wonderful Mark Hamill), Andy grows attached to his new Buddi. Things start out great, but as Chucky processes and is influenced by Andy’s complex home life, lets just say the doll slowly becomes a menacing knife-wielding threat. And I do emphasize ‘slowly’ because it takes a while before any semblance of a horror thriller arrives.

In addition to its unexpectedly slow buildup, the film also suffers from an unfortunate identity crisis. I expected a “Child’s Play” reboot in 2019 would by necessity be a full-blown horror comedy. We get a few sparks of humor but far too often it takes itself way too seriously. And the uneven story treatment carries over to some of the characters.

Take Plaza’s Karen. She starts off as a signature Audrey Plaza character full of snark and dry, sarcastic wit. But that’s quickly tossed aside and Karen becomes little more than a necessary plot device. And it’s amazing how little agency she has. Take how oblivious she is to her jerk of a boyfriend’s treatment of Andy. A character with some level of conflict would have been interesting. The film isn’t much into that.

“Child’s Play” tries to make several statements on our culture, technology, and (somewhat hypocritically) the influences of violent entertainment. While some of it lands pretty well, it’s hard to take any of it too seriously. So in a nutshell it isn’t serious enough. It isn’t funny enough. It isn’t self-aware enough. Worst of all, it isn’t the slightest bit scary. There is some occasional fun and a little bit of amusing nostalgia, but certainly not enough to carry the movie through to its end.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

In 2013 Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski released the brilliantly concise and thoroughly evocative “Ida”. It was a haunting movie filled with beauty and intrigue. Also it was the first Polish picture to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It took five years but we finally have his follow-up and it’s just as mysterious and tantalizing.

“Cold War” is a much different film than Pawlikowski’s previous effort but you’ll quickly recognize some of the same artistic choices that made “Ida” so visually arresting. Once again he teams with cinematographer Lukasz Zal who shoots in gorgeous black-and-white and uses the desaturated palette to convey the mood of a postwar Poland struggling under the weight of Communism. This time even more emphasis is put on the strategic use of shadows and lighting.

The Warsaw-born Pawlikowski tells a story loosely based on the tempestuous and constantly intersecting romance of his own parents from whom the two lead characters take their names. Structurally it moves from point to point along the relationship timeline of Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Zula (Joanna Kulig). Their earnest yet troubled romance serves as the film’s centerpiece.

The story opens in 1949 with Wiktor and his colleague Irena (played by the excellent and underused Agata Kulesza) visiting rural villages to find undiscovered singing talent for their state-sponsored folk music project. Those chosen are brought to a school to be trained for an upcoming tour. It’s here that Wiktor is drawn to young Zula. He sees something special in her and his curiosity quickly turns to captivation.

Telling too much more would hurt the experience, but let’s just say their mutual attraction grows into a romance – passionate and sincere but troubled from the start. Pawlikowski skips across their timeline making stops in Warsaw, Paris, and Yugoslavia. Along the way we watch Wiktor and Zula separate, reunite, and then separate again all amid an ever-changing European post-war landscape (something else Pawlikowski and Zal capture with incredible clarity through their lens).

From early on you can sense that “Cold War” is a deeply personal story. It’s a love story that is both romantic and tragic. Two fine lead performances drive the central relationship which is filled with intense passion but also missed opportunities at every turn. At the same time Pawlikowski has several things to say about the time period and much of it is vividly told through his camera. That extra layer is what pushes “Cold War” into truly special territory.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

“Custody” is a searing domestic drama and the first feature from French director Xavier Legrand. The 39-year-old started as a child stage actor but is most known for his 29-minute short from 2013 “Just Before Losing Everything”. It was his first effort behind the camera, catching a lot of eyes and even earning Legrand an Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film.

Interestingly, with “Custody” Legrand takes on the same subject as his award-winning short, even using the same characters and key performers. His feature-length look at a fractured family is more observant and slightly ambiguous. It allows us more time in the heads of his characters to plow their mindsets and decide for ourselves whose side we’re on. You could say we the audience are positioned to be the judge.

Miriam (Léa Drucker) and Antoine (Denis Ménochet) are in a contentious custody dispute with their 12-year-old son Julien (Thomas Gioria) caught in the middle. They have a daughter Joséphine (Mathilde Auneveux) but she is a few days away from being of age to decide things for herself.

The film opens with a mesmerizing closed-door court hearing where the judge sits across from the parents and their lawyers who each make their case for and against custody. Through affidavits the children declare their desire to be with their mother. Miriam’s lawyer poses allegations of violence and abuse. But the claims clash with Antoine’s desire to be involved in his son’s life and the glowing character references from friends and co-workers. It prompts the judge to ask them both “Which of you is the biggest liar?”

Nothing Lagrand does is without thought and purpose, from the quiet intense closeups to the absence of a score. His film is all about the characters and placing them in the most authentic, real-life situations possible. We the audience simply sit back and take it all in, watching as this layered drama unfolds into a tense and unsettling thriller.

Even the casting feels intentional – the brawny and physically imposing Ménochet; the petite and tightly wound Drucker. These deftly handled characters slowly and meticulously give us all the information we need before the lid bursts off in a final 15 minutes filled with simmering white-knuckled tension. This is where Legrand’s well-calculated restraint pays off the most.

Lagrand comes at everything from a deeply human perspective and tells his story with a hushed realism. It’s the exact opposite of how Hollywood tends to approach these subjects today. Think Dardenne Brothers but with a slightly sharper edge. And it helps to have such top-notch performances from Ménochet, Drucker, and especially young Gioria whose worried eyes and soulful gaze shatters your heart. Actually, the entire movie does.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS