Crawlspace is part Scanners, part Inception, and part … well… Crawlspace (the Klaus Kinski one). Not at all what I was expecting and I loved it for that.
An alarm sounds as an unknown woman opens her eyes, as if for the first time ever. She becomes ill and stands up. In doing so, she hits her head finding that she is in not only in an unknown confined space, but she also has a surgical scar on her head. A wristband marked “Eve” gives the only clue to her of her identity. To her right is a pile of dead, mutilated bodies. She’s horrified. As Eve runs away, the title comes up. This is how Crawlspace begins, and it is only the first of many many questions the movie asks the viewer to answer.
As Eve makes her way around the unknown environment, an unknown search party is, at the same moment, making their way into the facility on a rescue and kill operation. Rescuing the facilities staff comes in second to killing their targets. Eve and the other patients are being hunted and killed for some unknown reason, and she has to get out.
Crawlspace is not so much a horror movie, honestly, as it is a action thriller with horror bits thrown in there. It’s sort of like the first Resident Evil movie (which I actually liked, for the most part) but better. The entire cast ( and the movie itself) is Australian. Making it the second film that I watched with an all Aussie setting and cast in a marathon. This and Road Train have been surprisingly well done. The Aussies should be given more spotlight as they seem to have their shit together when it comes to movies.
Anyway, it’s hard to review Crawlspace with out spoiling it. This is the first movie that has made me go back and watch, at least the opening, twice to get my facts right. Well, Sorority House Massacre II had me do the same thing, but that was because it was bat-shit crazy. Crawlspace alludes to several thing during the course of the movie that it never really doubles back on, but when your finished watching it, causes you to think “Oh that changes everything.” I like the fact that it made me really look back over the entire movie and figure things out. That’s pretty rare in most movies, let alone a (pseudo) horror movie.
I would highly recommend that anyone reading this review watch this film. Again, not something I usually get to say during this marathon, but I think Crawlspace is worth it. It’s well acted, well directed, and very well written.
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