Crawl (France/Serbia/UK 2019: Dir Alexandre Aja)

Competitive swimmer Haley (Kaya Scodelario), hearing the news about a Category 5 hurricane threatening her home town via her sister Beth (Morfydd Clark), decides to travel back to locate her father Dave (Barry Pepper), who still lives there and has stopped answering calls. After a hazardous journey she tracks him down at the former family house, now being sold following her parents' divorce, and finds him unconscious and badly injured in the crawlspace under the building.

But as the storm really hits and Haley struggles to revive dad, who has suffered a number of reptilian attacks, an increasing number of alligators enter their basement prison, which is rapidly filling with water. Haley must battle her way out and, impossibly, try to save both their lives against a double peril of natural and reptilian obstacles.

And that, ladies, gentlemen and others, is all you need for 90 minutes of, as those classification bods would have it, sustained peril. French director Aja, who scored winning points with his sophomore movie Haute Tension back in 2003, has built up a serviceable but not particularly innovative CV since (a remake of The Hills Have Eyes in 2006 and the fun but silly 3D reboot of Piranha in 2010, for example). And in Crawl content wise the director continues not to surprise, in this mix of Jaws (1975) and Twister (1994). But what he has achieved here is a tense, pared down film, light on budget but high on nail biting thrills.

Kaya Scodelario is a bit of a revelation, as the feisty Haley. Her resilience has the audience on her side from the opening moments, where she loses a swimming competition but toughs it out, hearing the voice of her father - formerly her trainer - telling her not to cry in front of the others: her unstinting desire to keep both dad and the family dog alive makes it no problem for us to root for her. Essentially Crawl is a two hander (not counting the 'gators, but we'll get to those, and ignore the reptile fodder of some passing looters and gormless police) between Haley and dad, interlacing the action with the gradually developed but unmawkish story of their history, a similarity of character underscoring both their estrangement and subsequent reconciliation. Aja also provides emotional context more subtly than we were expecting in a film like this (Haley's phone contact is listed as 'Daddy' and notches in the doorframe denoting childhood growth suggest a once much closer relationship).

The part practical effects/part CGI alligators (did you think Aja would use real ones?) are way more convincing than expected, in part because they're not overplayed, often conveying menace just by swimming in circles, and also because they're part of a very claustrophobic set up: sure the crawlspace - in which much of the film is located - is a set but its waterlogged crumminess, full of icky flotsam and jetsam, provides an environment in which the reptiles blend in with the other floating slimy things thrown up by the flood.

Crawl feels like a disaster movie, but one with most of the disaster placed in the background, concentrating on that final reel survival struggle of the main characters. Haley and Dave's attempts to stay alive may be the stuff of genre cliche, but that doesn't stop the film being a thrill ride with unexpected emotional heft. Aja has taken all the positives from his previous movies, and successfully integrated them into this exciting addition to the rampaging reptile sub genre. Strongly recommended.

The Quake (Norway 2018: Dir John Andreas Andersen)

"I can't even imagine the nightmare you have been through. But that doesn't mean disasters follow you." Sadly for Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner) - but happily for the viewer - that's not the case here. Fans of disaster movies will hopefully have caught Roar Uthaug's 2015 movie The Wave, which depicted the story of the 85 foot high tsunami that swept through the Norwegian fjord town of Geiranger taking the lives of 248 people, and was remarkable not only for its special effects but also the care taken to depict, with levels of integrity not normally seen in this genre, the world of the characters affected by the event.

The Quake is set three years after the Geiranger disaster. Eikjord, the worried geologist who had predicted the arrival of the tsunami in The Wave, returns, with his wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp), son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) and daughter Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande). However the family are not together. Idun and the kids have relocated to Oslo, while Kristian, clearly suffering from PTSD, has remained in Geiranger 310 kilometres away, still finding it difficult to come to terms with the human loss of the tsunami, even though he was responsible for saving the lives of many, including his family.

When his friend and fellow geologist Konrad Linblom dies in a tunnel collapse just outside the city, Kristian travels to Oslo, and finds in Lindblom's apartment both his daughter Marit (Kathrine Thorborg Johansen) and a huge amount of research, which concludes that the Norwegian capital is about to experience a massive earthquake. Kristian's recent mental health issues mean that - surprise, surprise - his protestations about imminent disaster fall on deaf ears with the authorities. Kristian reunites with his family just in time for them to be separated again as disaster strikes the city.

The quake hits in, er, The Quake

Like The Wave before it, the actual disaster in The Quake is relatively brief, but unlike the previous movie, which became a little hesitant post tsunami, this film builds on the tension of the earthquake and never lets up for a minute afterwards. The Quake has all the standard elements of the disaster movie; the maverick who was right all along; the authorities who don't want to believe him; the sacrificial expert whose death is the key to the unfolding of events; the estranged family reunited over tragedy. But Andersen handles these cliches expertly, making them crucial elements of the movie rather than a series of eye rolling moments.

Kristoffer Joner is suitably addled as Eikjord, his unswerving conviction about his theories believably battling with the need to be with his family (there a lovely scene near the beginning of the film where Julia comes to stay, only to be sent home again as Kristian realises that he's not fit to be a parent to her). The family are all well cast but special praise must be given to Edith Haagenrud-Sande as Julia; her wide eyed and artless performance, capturing in her face what it means to live with separated parents, is exceptional.

And when disaster strikes, the special effects are phenomenal, made more spectacular by the sparing use of them. Andersen knows that shots of collapsing office blocks, parks and streets will only have a lasting impact if they're framed by very human stories, and this he achieves. The Quake may not have the ending you were expecting; it's a disaster movie that doesn't always play by the rules, which makes it unmissable.

The Quake is out on HD and DVD from 20th May 2019.

Train to Busan (South Korea 2016: Dir Yeon Sang-ho)

Zombie movies have been around for decades. The genre shows no signs of fading (in fact quite the opposite), so these days to keep things fresh filmmakers often approach such films with a view to exploiting their cross genre potential: so we’ve had the zombie romance movie, the zombie comedy, the zombie war film, the zombie animals attack movie…and now, courtesy of South Korea’s Yeon Sang-ho, we have the zombie disaster movie.

Seok Woo is a misanthropic financial investor with a failed marriage and a daughter, Soo-an, who spends time split between separated parents. You can tell that Seok Woo’s a bit of a meanie – he buys his daughter a present for her birthday that he’d already bought her earlier that year, and his ex-wife is listed on his phone as just that – ‘ex wife.’ He also categorises most of his business contacts on the same phone as ‘lemmings.’

Currently staying with dad but missing mum, Soo-an’s birthday wish is to take the train and visit her mother in Busan, and Seok Woo grudgingly agrees to alter his business schedule to accompany his daughter on the journey. But as the train pulls away from Seoul station, the city’s placed under lockdown following a viral outbreak throughout the country – unfortunately one of the last people to board is an early victim of the infection.

The rest of Train to Busan is a series of incredibly tense set pieces as the numbers of infected on the train rise exponentially, and the uninfected survivors attempt to stay alive until the train reaches Busan.

Director Sang-ho’s background is in animation, which is to the film's advantage as he stages the action really well, filling the screen with incident, and his wide shots of city devastation look stunning. The rise of the infected, pouring between train carriages and smashing through sheets of broken glass like swarms of insects, is both terrifying and relentless. And the infection spreads in seconds, providing that the zombie gets a decent bite in (of course key characters who become infected are only partly chomped, therefore taking much longer to turn, and fulfilling one of the great disaster movie staples, the long death scene). The action is enhanced no end by the zombies being of the very fast and incredibly athletic variety (is there any other type these days?), although they're not so bright, having a problem with door handles and darkness.

And talking of disaster movies, this film is full of steals from that genre. Stick thin characterisation at the beginning of the movie to establish the key players; evil ‘must-survive-at-any-cost’ businessman who’ll step on anyone to stay alive; final reel with major character change triggered by emotional epiphany; they’re all here. I did slightly take exception to little Kim Su-an ( who very convincingly plays Soo-an), not because she isn’t a terrific actress, but more that she spends the last twenty minutes of the film screaming and crying, which to me felt more than a little exploitative and rather unnecessary for a very young girl to be put through.

Critics have praised  this film for its combination of horror and heart tugging moments - personally I felt these elements, combined with the broad humour (also to be found in films like Joon Ho Bong's 2006 movie The Host) didn't quite gel. But really Train to Busan is all about the action. At two hours long it rarely flags, and Sang-ho escapes the limitations of a film set on one train by breaking up the set pieces, allowing the audience to recover themselves before the next slice of undead action. It’s nail biting stuff and, despite my slight concerns, really does breathe new life into the genre.