Crawler (2009)

(On Cable TV, June 2022) Given my laughable credentials as a film reviewer, my connections to the film industry are tenuous, outdated and almost entirely tied to the French-Canadian market. One of the particularities in reviewing the little-known, little-seen horror film Crawler is that I remember attending a few Montréal-area genre conventions alongside its writer-director S. V. Bell back in the late 1990s – I don’t recall interacting with him, but I’m reasonably sure we were in the same room together a few times. But anyway – Crawler is a low-budget Québec-made horror film that clearly apes Stephen King’s films of the 1980s – mysterious not-really-explained horror taking the form of a bulldozer that kills people. But not in the way you imagine – sure, that bulldozer crawls over a few people, but it also hosts various horrors of imaginary, tentacular and ichorific forms. All of this to say – it doesn’t end well for most of the construction crew around the bulldozer. What’s perhaps most remarkable about this clearly low-end production is how sunny and colourful it often is, with much of the action taking place on a rural construction site with bright yellows, greens and blues. Some of the practical special effects are not bad when graded against their 1980s inspirations. The acting is not so good, but as with the rest of the film… I’ve seen worse. You’ll have to work overtime to see Crawler: shown at Fantasia 2009 but otherwise not theatrically screened, currently unavailable on physical media and streaming media, the film briefly popped up on French-Canadian horror channel Frissons TV as part of their occasional unearthing of obscure local genre films. The amusing thing is that it’s better than much of what else plays on the channel!