Review of Crawlspace (2012) by Archibald T — 16 Jan 2013

There was a very strange thing in the first 20 minutes that I noticed. Instead of setting up the characters or building up a first act structure it seems that first time writer/director Justin Dix thought to put together an opening 2nd act to begin the film because it starts as if we're right in the middle of the story already! No set up except for the thrown together details that a group of military people have to go find their lead science team at a remote outpost after they've lost contact with them.

A young woman, Eve, awakes and finds herself in what looks like the interiors of a spaceship, but it's really a top secret government facility. Her brain has been recently operated on for a project known as Genesis. The project includes giving people psychic abilities to combat the world's most notorious enemies. Psychic warfare as a means of turning it's enemies against themselves sounds like something Dr. Eric Vornoff would come up with.

For reasons that we're never really sure of, the prisoners that were kept at this facility have escaped. Their newly acquired powers are put to use once the military enter the picture. The soldiers are sent to grab the scientists until the powers that be begin to pick them off one by one. One of the soldiers discovers that Eve use to be his wife, but tried to kill her before except she isn't his wife and blah blah blah. None of that matters when the characters are all unlikable. Even the character of Eve is someone you can't care about since she only turns into a vicious creature who uses her new powers for the dark side. The characters were essential card board cut outs of the one's you'd see in films like "Aliens" and "Resident Evil". In fact, if those two films fucked and had a baby this would be it's offspring. That may sound intriguing if you're a HUGE fan of "Aliens" and "Resident Evil"!

There was one moment where a giant gorilla charges at them early on in the film that was put to good use. I would've enjoyed it more if it dealt with a giant group of gorillas than a dull hodgepodge of mind control antics. The claustrophobic nature of the film does work and the visuals are pretty to look at. The use of the color green is present through much of the film and I really liked that. I didn't like how poorly this fucking film was written since it was obviously made to cash in on one person's first directorial debut. Justin Dix may have a good visual flare when directing, but he needs to not write another screenplay to one of his films.

Overall, Ed Wood would be proud.