Otherwise known as Alien Crawl, or the affectionately titled “Crawl Bitch Crawl”, Crawl or Die is an action film about crawling. In an underground industrial tunnel. And that’s it. If you’re a railway maintenance worker, air vent installation man, or a modern troglodyte, oh wow, you’re gonna just love this.
With the curious introduction that all human life has lost its fertility apart from a woman, the poor survivor herself is suddenly thrown into an underground complex which appears to consist entirely of small, dark and claustrophobic crawlspaces. Led by a team of overweight special forces personnel, they fight for their lives against a relentless and human-devouring beast.
Mostly fixated on “Tank” (Nicole Alonso), a blonde wearing a tank top, leather boots and a new haircut, this flick seems to despise the idea of dialogue or narrative and attempts to be a slow, long, endless action scene. It’s comparable as an entire story built out of the nail-biting part of Alien where Ripley is facing the alien with a flamethrower, except there’s no flamethrower or a great motivation to bite any nails.
Not much invites the viewer on this ride: the content of the script is minimal and content is slashed to the bone, consisting virtually of frightened or infuriated yelps and curses, and the shameless lack of tangible plot is further punctured with aimless and directionless ineptitude. The monster is a inferior rip-off too; and a really bad rendition as well, dependent on exceptionally choppy editing to appear convincing.
Its best work is perhaps in the lush gory lighting that spills across so many scenes which crudely paint a bloody and dismal picture upon the backdrop of gritty realism. The landscape of atmospheric ambiance and animal growls isn’t exactly terrible either, though it’s ruined by the pornographic amount of women simply panting and gasping.
Finally, there are admittedly a few points where the sense of isolation does become eerily effective, as the protagonist becomes hopelessly more lost and stranded; and to focus purely on the intense struggle and torment of one person is brave, if almost slightly sadistic. So this isn’t a complete disaster as such. Better described as a questionable experiment, where the single premise of someone being caught in a tunnel could have used a little room for improvement.
3/10
Possession Media 