Creepy Crawly - Movie Review

The Movie: Creepy Crawly

The Directors: Chalit Krileadmongkon & Pakphum Wongjinda

The Cast: Pirat Nitipaisalkul, Chanya McClory , Benjamin Joseph Varney, David Asavanon

The Story: While quarantining at a Thailand hotel, guests begin disappearing with no explanation from staff, leaving the group to wonder whether there may be some truth to local urban legends about a terrifying creature rumored to possess its victims.

The Review:

This is one of those movies that will remind you of about half a dozen other similar films although it unfortunatley doesn't live up to any of those in comparison. My first thought when I saw the trailer for this movie was the classic 80's horror movie Night of the Creeps as well as Slither, James Gunn's 2006 remake of that film. I'm pretty sure Creepy Crawly, the title give to the movie for US distribution, is a nod to thos movies anyway so I can't be the alone one. The hotel quarantine element also evokes the Spanish film series REC just for starters.

The movie itself seems to be playing as a straight horror, creature film although it ends up being pretty cheesy and borders on being downright campy by the time its over. Most of the physics in the movie make absolutely no sense which, its probably not supposed to, but still. You can't just impale a character through the chest with a limb bigger than a softball bat and then have them come back unscathed a few scenes later.

I think if the filmmakers had gone all in with the movie being intentionally campy and added more humor then it would have played much better and the payoffs at the end would have been a lot more satisfying. As it is, the creature effects are really the highlight of the movie since the story gives us no reason at all to care about any of the characters and there's no sense of urgency because people only kind of die half the time and sometimes they do and none of that really matters either.

The Verdict:

Creepy Crawly creeps around and crawls through a story that doesn't make much sense. Kind of entertaining as unintentional camp but never really sicceeds at what it sets out to accomplish.