‘Crawl’ Director Alexandre Aja: No Alligators Were Harmed In The Making Of His Survival Horror

Never judge a book by its cover, they say. When Alexandre Aja was first handed the script to Crawl, he wasn’t so much intrigued by the cover, but its logline (or brief summary). “A young woman has to save her dad during a Category 5 hurricane in Florida in a zone infested with alligators,” recalls Aja, 40, best known as a member of the Splat Pack, a coterie of filmmakers (which also included James Wan and Neil Marshall) in the noughties heavily influenced by ’70s and ’80s no-holds-barred, shock-and-shriek yarns made by Wes Craven, George A Romero and David Cronenberg.

“It’s so obvious and efficient that I couldn’t believe that no one else has done it before,” the Parisian tells 8 DAYS over the phone from New York. After the splashy comedy of Piranha, the fable-like mystery of Horns and the psychological mind games of The 9th Life of Louis Drax, Aja felt Crawl was the perfect vehicle to get his feet wet again, so to speak, and revisit the gritty and grotty style seen in his breakout High Tension and US debut The Hills Have Eyes, something “scary and intense that will have the audience on the edge of their seats.”

us more about the challenges he faced making his scaly home invasion tale.

Excursion: Director Alexandre Aja (centre) with 'Crawl' stars Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper at the press day event at the Long Island Aquarium's 'Gator Invasion!' in New York on July 9, 2019.

8 DAYS: You worked with water in Piranha. Did that movie make your job easier on Crawl?

ALEXANDRE AJA: You know what? Piranha was made 10 years ago, so I kinda forgot how difficult it was (laughs). Even then, it didn’t make things any simpler. If anything, it was more difficult because Piranha was mostly shot above water whereas in Crawl, we shot it above and under the water. [Kaya Scodelario] was in the water with the crew all the time. We built seven tanks; the biggest one was 18m by 60 by 3m… it was insane. We also had wind blowing at 150km/h and rain in the studio. You have to imagine we spent 40 days of shooting every day in the wet suit in the water. It was very intense.

The crawl space is another character in the movie. Was the set as cramped as it looks?

It was very tight. We used to call it the pit or the mine. We had a roof over the pit and we would go down a small ladder into the muddy water. In theory, the pit is supposed to be safe and clean. But we added organic mud, and leaves [and debris] from the woods, and we ended up with water that was not that clean. Everyone knew what we were doing. Physically, it was obvious from the script, it was going to be difficult. I don’t think at any point did Kaya or Barry [Pepper] could’ve imagined how hard it was going to be. They were amazing. They realised very fast that when they came out of the crawl space between scenes, it was going to be so hot for them to go back down. So we all decided to just stay in the crawl space [even between takes]. It was really a survival story within a survival story.

I noticed a shark bobblehead on the dashboard of Kaya’s car. Clearly, you were paying a homage to Jaws…

It’s hard to do any type of water movie with real beasts without thinking about Jaws, especially in Florida, which is a very intense place. You have the alligators, sharks and snakes…it’s a pretty wild place to live.

But you opted to shoot the movie in Belgrade, Serbia.

We knew it was impossible to shoot a hurricane movie on location for very obvious reasons. If we had shot in Florida, we would have to digitally erase all the trees and recreate [new CG elements]. No matter what we knew we had to build everything in a soundstage. Considering the size of what we had to build, we looked around the world for the biggest space [that could accommodate a movie with rain, water and wind], and we found this gigantic warehouse at the port of Belgrade which was perfect for us. That was where we set up camp and built all the tanks on stage.

By the way, I couldn’t tell if the alligators were CG or animatronics.

There were no animatronics or CG alligators — they were all real (laughs)! To be perfectly honest, I knew I wanted to make the most realistic type of alligator movie. When you look at real alligator footage online, you see how fast and slow they are and the way they stay still with their mouths open. I didn’t want to do a movie where you only see inserts. I really wanted to see their whole body sliding in the mud. I wanted to get the feel of the backlit on their scales, so I kinda guessed that it’s impossible to achieve all that with animatronics. The only way to do it is with fully CG alligators and that was why we decided to do it very early on. Except for three shots in the movie, everything is CGI. That doesn’t mean we didn’t have to do anything on the set. It’s actually the opposite. We created real water splashes. We used an alligator head on a stick [for the actors to react to]. We had stuntmen in green suits and divers to recreate [how the alligators would swim up and break] the surface of the water. All these practical elements were very important to create to the best visual effects.

Sam Raimi is the producer on Crawl. How collaborative is he as a producer?

He’s not only one of the best filmmakers, he’s also one of the best collaborators you can imagine — the producer every director dreams to have. He’s here to support your vision, not hold it back. He’s there to help find solutions and this was one movie where we had to find solutions to challenges every day. He was really helpful to have him. He has a filmmaker’s eye. He knows his craft. It was an amazing opportunity. When I came to the US in 2003 for High Tension, I had the amazing luck of having to choose between two projects: The Hills Have Eyes with Wes Craven, and The Messengers with Sam Raimi. I had to choose and it was difficult; I was such a big fan of Wes and Sam. [When I decided to do The Hills Have Eyes], I wrote a letter to Sam, “Sorry I was to not able to make this movie but I hope we will find another one.” It took a long time but Crawl was the right one to do.

What’s next for Alexandre Aja? IMDB says you’re adapting the manga Cobra The Space Pirate and you’ve always wanted to do a sci-fi movie. How is that coming along?

I don’t think we can do Cobra The Space Pirate soon. It’s very difficult in the world of so many Star Wars movies, but I hope one day to make it. Right now after Crawl, I want to stay in the genre. I really want to find ways to [scare] the audience. There isn’t a better time than now to make that type of movies. Before I was a filmmaker, I was a moviegoer and as an audience member, I saw a hall of people screaming, holding to their seats — I could feel the intensity of that immersive experience. It’s a great feeling. It’s so nice that we get to do this right now around the world. I want to keep doing that. It’s a golden age for horror movies.

Crawl (NC16) is now in cinemas.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Photos: UIP, TPG News/Click Photos