Crawl movie director Alexandre Aja says that when it comes to the prospect of Crawl 2, “We’ve been talking about a sequel nonstop.” The first Crawl (2019) saw Maze Runner star Kaya Scodelario play Haley Keller, a talented swimmer who travels down to Florida to check on her estranged father (Barry Pepper) before his condo is hammered by a Category 5 hurricane. That storm causes a flood that traps Haley and her father with three large alligators that have invaded the basement. The film was a novel horror flick but seemed like a pretty clear standalone tale. But according to Aja, there have more ideas in cooking…
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When speaking to Bloody Disgusting’s Book Crew Podcast, Aja explained that “I think the story of Haley is a really strong one, but I believe that Crawl is about nature taking back its due, and kind of like… more hurricane driven, man versus animal. So maybe it will be another story altogether… We’re looking for that human story right now, that will be as strong as the one in the first one. To make the second one legit.”
As stated, the first Crawl seemed like a standalone horror story – but Alexandre Aja has a point. The “Man vs. Nature” theme of the film is something that can be applied to other films – films set in entirely new locales, featuring new kinds of predatory animals. Really, the only carryover you need from the first film is the idea of being trapped in some kind of cramped space or area with dangerous animals and needing to “crawl” out of there to survive.
Bringing back Kaya Scodelario’s Haley Keller seems like something of a risk; Haley would start to feel like John Mclain in Die Hard: always happening to be in the exact place where some drastic calamity unfolds. It worked for John Mclain – it would feel silly for Haley Keller. Even if there was some logical reason for Haley to end up in that situation again (like working in a place with dangerous animals) horror fans would be throwing snark at the hokey circumstances that led her back into the life-or-death struggle.
Crawl could probably learn a thing or two from the Final Destination franchise. Every Final Destination film brought in a new set of characters in a new setting, but kept the common theme of death operating like sadistic Rube Goldberg machine to kill survivors of freak disasters. That franchise ran five films and earned over half a billion dollars worldwide, on budgets that never went above $40 million. Crawl earned $91.5 million on a budget of $13 – 15 million, so the franchise potential is definitely there.
