CRAWL Exclusive Interview With Director Alexandre Aja About His Hit Killer Alligator Disaster Movie

Paramount Pictures' Crawl, which starred Kaya Scodelario (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) and Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan) and hailed from producer Sam Raimi (Spider-Man), was one of this past summer's most welcome surprises, earning strong reviews across the board (82% Certified Fresh on RottenTomatoes) and grossing over $83.5 million ($39M domestic; $44.5M foreign) worldwide on an extremely modest $13.5 million production budget. 

Ahead of tomorrow's Blu-ray and DVD launch, CBM was granted an exclusive opportunity to catch up with director Alexandre Aja (Piranha 3D, Horns, The Hills Have Eyes, Maniac) and talk about his hit killer alligator disaster movie. 

During our fun conversation, we cover translating real world tragedy into a cinematic experience, creating lifelike alligators that are every bit as deadly as their real-life counterparts, his experience filming in Serbia, how to outswim an alligator, the film's scrapped alternate opening, the triumphant ending, how Jaws and his work on Piranha 3D informed his decisions on this one, the possibility of a sequel and more.

ROHAN: I was really impressed at how accurate and realistic the film felt, especially early on when the town is being evacuated and we see how locals are reacting to it. Having grown up in North Carolina, I’ve experienced quite a few hurricanes over the years, nothing as bad as what we see in the movie, but definitely one or two big ones every fall.

When doing your research for Crawl, how much did you look to actual real world horror stories to incorporate into the film?

ALEXANDRE AJA: I mean, in fact, a lot. I read so many stories about people finding themselves restrained and trapped in their own houses, with water, and there was something that was kind of interesting and weird.

When you look at a movie like Jaws where if you stay on the beach, you're safe, but in this situation, you’re in your own home and there is a hurricane and water is coming in and the water is rising. There is something so invasive, so powerful about twenty tons of water just crushing through a house. It's like a tsunami, it’s like the most insane kind of story.

I remember reading another story about people in Florida having to go into the water to access some people who are blocked in one of their units and alligators being around. Also, I remember when we started the project, hurricanes were big in survival stories, unfortunately forever, but the presence of alligators or crocodiles was rare, but as we were making the movie, hurricanes, floods and torrential rain were happening more and more often. We were reading crazy, insane stories from Queensland, Australia, where 25,000 homes were underwater with the police saying, “Okay, there are crocodiles. You have to be really careful with the streets full of water and caiman roaming the streets.” There is so many weirdly close to Crawl stories that have been happening.

ROHAN: Were the alligators entirely CGI or were you able to use some animatronics or possibly even a real alligator at some point?

ALEXANDRE: In a weird way, I wanted to make the movie as grounded and real as possible, but maybe on the hyperreal side, so I had the exact same approach for the alligators and for the hurricane. Thanks to the internet, I went through hundreds of hours of alligator and crocodile footage and I tried to actually select the most aggressive ones, the most scary ones, the ones that are unusually active and I did the same with the hurricane, like shooting the place where you could actually see the dark sky, and I knew that I couldn't shoot a real hurricane in Florida and it was kind of impossible to do, just because of the simple fact of the trees bending under 200 mile winds, ripping off rooftops and creating these crazy weather conditions, so we had to build everything.

So, all the hurricane was CG and all of the alligators were CG as well to create those same kind of super fast movements and the same kind of behavior those creatures have that you cannot get otherwise.

ROHAN: I didn’t realize the entire film was shot in Serbia till after I saw it, so did you have to build all the different tanks for Kaya to swim through?

ALEXANDRE: We built seven tanks, the biggest one was - I’m sorry, I’m speaking meters - but it was 80 meters by 60 meters, which is absolutely gigantic and we can to fill it up. It was quite crazy. I’m happy that the DVD/Blu-ray is coming out because there is a really, really behind-the-scenes video that shows how insane it was to make this movie.

ROHAN: The Blu-ray also comes with with an alternate opening for the movie. Is there a reason why you ultimately decided to scrap it or was it to save some of that alligator tension until later in the film?

ALEXANDRE: First, it was quite an expensive scene and we had a limited budget, and at some points, I thought that it was maybe one moment too much. So, we decided to remove it because of that and because it was also a scene that was without our main character and was centered on a different family.

The slow build, I mean, not the slow build because when it starts, it starts very fast, but it just kind of took the focus away from the main character and I just wanted to keep the focus on her. It was kind of a cool scene, maybe a good starting point for a sequel, but it was still fun to make into an animated storyboard.

ROHAN: Piranha also a very fun movie, but in that one after giving the family a happy ending of sorts, you snatch it away from them before the credits roll when the adult piranhas arrive.

I was practically holding my breath in this one because I felt like you may pull something similar again here, but you don’t and you give them a happy ending. Did you ever consider going darker with the ending where maybe the dad died or maybe neither of them made it?

ALEXANDRE: No, I think that we played with the idea of the dad not making it to the end because he had been going through so much that at the end, maybe he just dies. He’s already missing an arm, maybe his leg will be gone as well and that was a lot, so dying after seeing his daughter fully realized and standing in that light of the helicopter was a good way to go.

Also, it's interesting because when you look at the deleted scenes, you get additional light about what is his motivation, about why he wanted to stay in the house during the hurricane. He felt like someone that wanted to die somehow, he wanted to just like be here, fight the elements, and even if the price was to go as well, because for him, there were worse ways to go.

ROHAN: There have been countless shark movies, but this is your second film with a non-traditional underwater creature serving as the villain. While Piranha was obviously inspired by Jaws, how did your work on that film inform how you made Crawl?

ALEXANDRE: Yeah, I mean Jaws is always the kind of manual. It’s just like the movie you keep watching and every time you’re just blown away by the pure fiction of it and at the same time, it’s interesting how Jaws became the archetype for this movie and because of Jaws, a lot of movies are too similar and try to do the same thing and the “less is more” became the enemy of making a very efficient creature movie. So, when we did Crawl, I didn’t want to do “less is more,” I really wanted to go with the actual, “We're going to surprise you and we’re going to show the alligators right away and we're going to show them being feral and have them attack so that you’re scared right away,” so, everything is possible in a sense - that was a very important point for me.

ROHAN: The movie really did well at the box office, and while I think it tells a complete story about a daughter and her father, have you considered a follow-up? Is that something you’d like to do?

ALEXANDRE: Yes - when you make a movie and you finish it, there is something very sad where you spend so much time working, this one was also so intense physically, that at the end, when it’s over, you just keep thinking about, “Oh, is there a way to come back? Is there a way to create other stories?,” and I think there are so many of them to tell.

Unfortunately, weather is not getting better and hurricanes are happening more and more often and the wildlife - all those creatures that are living next to us like our neighbors - they just don't care. If the conditions are there, they will spread, they will invade, they will eat and they will take over because that was their place first. So, there are many more stories that we could tell.

ROHAN: The film establishes pretty early on that the alligators are deadly fast underwater but are slower on land. Did you have to look into how fast Kaya would actually have to swim to realistically be able to avoid an alligator for even a short amount of time?

ALEXANDRE: *laughs* It was very important for me, when we were working on writing the script, that we created a character that was, to start with, someone that was not usual. The fact that she's been a real swimming champion, that she's one of the fastest in her school and maybe she will end up in the Olympics. That made her unique. I would never survive. I think most people would never ever be able to beat them, but someone like her potentially could. When we were shooting the movie, Kaya went through a very intense training, but we also had a really great double, who was the actual Serbian Olympic champion and you see the speed, the size, the power of her swimming and you understand that if someone could beat an alligator, it will be this person.

 

When a massive hurricane hits her Florida hometown, Haley (Kaya Scodelario) ignores evacuation orders to search for her missing father (Barry Pepper). Finding him gravely injured in the crawl space of their family home, the two become trapped by quickly encroaching floodwaters. As time runs out to escape the strengthening storm, Haley and her father discover that the rising water level is the least of their fears. From director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) and producers Craig Flores (300), Sam Raimi (Don’t Breathe, Evil Dead) and Alexandre Aja, Crawl is a nail-biting horror thriller in theatres July 12, 2019.