Crawlspace (2012)

Just what I expected

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is Science Fiction. But it's not Interstellar, 2001 or anything similar to those movies. No it's low budget. And considering the budget this had, I have to admit I was really impressed. The look of the movie is great (Blu Ray) and the acting is not bad either. There is not much story, but what you get is enough to hold your attention.The movie does get violent though, so it's not for the squeamish. Twists can be foreseen, but it's the way everything is handled and I'm willing to stress that out again. Set design, lighting and everything else is pretty solid, which adds to a great look. The movie can be fun, if you are willing to accept a few slight missteps here and there. It's not a classic or anything, but it's way better than a lot of other movies that try and you can see the purity and passion they put into it

I saw this film at the Brussels fantastic film festival 2013 (BIFFF), in a very very late nightly session starting 1 AM. Myself and the rest of the audience was very well awake, however. Something very sinister was going to be shown, having to do with a clandestine research project. We learned all this from the synopsis on the festival website. It also refers to former experience of this director when cooperating in famous productions. We learned also that he formed an "incredible" team of film makers around him to create this Crawlspace.From the very start the tone is set when we see the briefing of a soldier team in an airplane on their way to the research facility in question. Photo's of "prisoners" are shown, with the explicit instruction to shoot them on sight. Implicit suggestion is that the prisoners are the cause that the facility lost contact with the outside world (what else could it be??). I know it is not customary to challenge military orders within a briefing, but this is too easy, too black&white and thus not very believable.The first scene within the facility follows a woman with a brace band showing Eve as her name (with orange pants, hence a "prisoner"). It is made very obvious that she does not recognize that name as her own. She succeeds very well in finding her way in the narrow "facilities" spaces while evading encounters with unknown adversaries (on whose side, we can only guess).The soldiers are divided in three teams when entering the facility. They carry electronic gadgets with plans of the building, and a lot of weaponry including hand grenades (not very appropriate in that environment, but I'm no expert). What seems to be a well coordinated military operation, soon turns into disorder when unexpected things start happening. When one of the teams meet Eve, their leader Romeo suddenly remembers her as his former wife, who was assumed drowned. We viewers are at a loss, as are his colleagues, since Eve's photo was shown during the briefing where he did not recognize her face. This is the first hint that something very peculiar is going on.The story line deteriorates soon after this, when impossible things start happening (like an over-sized gorilla suddenly turning up), combined with testosterone driven actions by the military without a proper plan how these actions can advance their mission. Especially when they encounter some scientists, it seems that who is the fastest in pointing a gun is automatically right and the pointees are automatically wrong. And a lot of yelling, of course, all of that leading us nowhere.I don't think it has any use to condense the story further, since logic is lost from this moment on and a lot of Action (with capital A, no sex) takes over. Many things are going on in subsequent scenes, some of them clarifying the underlying plot but others sowing doubts about any consistent plot. Given all that, I have no firm opinion on casting and acting.All in all, I may assume I was expecting too much, given the synopsis on the festival website. I may stand alone in my negative experience, however, because of some applause coming from the rest of the audience when the credits appeared. Anyway, whatever its faults, it was not a boring experience. Something was happening all the time, thereby giving us no reason to consult our watches. So it may be considered entertainment without pretenses. But the missed chances with the plot that deserved much better treatment, together with a lot of unnecessary illogicalities, make this film into something not suitable for the true SciFi fan.

'CRAWLSPACE': Two Stars (Out of Five)An ultra-low budget Australian sci-fi/horror flick about a team of special forces soldiers sent in to a secret military compound underground to rescue a group of scientists there. They find a woman with no memory of who she is or how she got there and something much deadlier that is unknown in origin. The film was directed and co-written (with Adam Patrick Foster and actor Eddie Baroo) by Justin Dix (a special effects and makeup artist making his feature film directing debut). Baroo stars in the film with Ditch Davey, Amber Clayton and Peta Sergeant (one of my favorite new actresses, to look at at least). The movie is one of those 'wannabe' sci-fi monster flicks that you can tell is heavily influenced by bigger and better films. It's pretty bad but given it's limited resources it's understandable. A special forces team is sent in to a secret military compound underground (known as Pine Gap) to find and rescue a team of scientists there. The compound was attacked by something but it's unknown what it's attackers were. The soldiers find a young woman in the compound named Eve (Clayton) who has no memory of who she is or what she's doing there. The leader of the military unit (Ditch Davey) thinks he knows who Eve is but the woman he thinks she is drowned some time ago (or at least he thinks she did). It's clear that the scientists were performing some kind of deadly experiments there and something very powerful has been unleashed. The movie is really just a much smaller-scale and much lower budget 'wannabe' 'ALIENS' film (one of my all time favorite movies). It has a team of soldiers in a small claustrophobic base and monsters (of some kind at least). It's of course not one-fifth the film that the classic and epic James Cameron masterpiece is but I can almost admire it's effort. I really just watched the film to see Peta Sergeant. She's not as hot here (playing a soldier named Wiki) as she was in the 2012 campy sci-fi flick 'IRON SKY' but she's still gorgeous. She's more of a tough action heroine in this film (she's no Ripley but she still has presence). Amber Clayton is really pretty to look at as well. As far as action and scares go the movie is extremely lacking but it's almost a 'well spent waste of time'. The women are beautiful and the atmosphere is nostalgic. A bad film indeed but not painfully bad.Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuVxCgCFIf8

The blatant copy and paste of other films is not new in Hollywood, but it is a surprise coming from down under Australia where the films are original if nothing else. I entered the cinema with high expectations, I love foreign films, Wolf Creek and Chopper are both brilliant examples of Australia's rawness and obvious talent pool. So I was not only disappointed to find Crawlspace itself was very, very average, but that it Seemed to rip off all of its elements from other American films. It made me question, Is aiming to be a B-grade Michael Bay really a great goal to inspire to? Unfortunately it is a very common process to copy a successful movie and repeat it's formula over and over again, let's face it as long as people keep paying for mediocrity; then directors will keep pumping them out.First time director Justin Dix then, I assume, knows formula and cliché sell well. But when a film comes across as being written quickly and without thought with only the dollar in mind. It shows. While it's understandable debut directors feel the need to play it safe, I'm hoping that emerging filmmakers from other countries strive higher than duplicating America's machine of mediocrity. It is not something we're proud of. It is truly a sad time when other countries are mimicking our crap.