Crawlspace (I) (2012)
3/10
Disaster of a slasher movie with little to like
13 June 2014
Moving into a new house, a family's unusual encounters within the house are soon discovered to be the disgruntled former owner looking for revenge against the occupants and must try to survive his vicious attacks.

This was a huge disappointment and really didn't have a whole lot here that's really enjoyable. The main thing hurting this movie is the fact that the main villain here is one of the weakest and lamest villains in horror-film history. The central premise of why he's haunting the family, being so grief-stricken over losing his house that he moves into the attic and lives there undetected for as long as he does here makes for a pretty lazy story, especially with the multitude of murders committed on the property before anyone realizes he's there. Then comes the fact that the film tries to make him some sympathetic hero with the reasoning for the family's loss of the house and what they did to his psyche is pure fluff and has no regard in the rest of the story when the seemingly sympathetic hero embarks on such a rampage as what occurs here when he finally starts dishing out the violence. Even before he starts off, the fact that the majority of the film is spent on areas outside the stalking and killing that really drags this one down, as there's so much going on with him observing the family but not actually doing anything that there's such a long time in this before it actually starts getting interesting. Simply watching them in the attic has a creepy feel at first but does little to hold the viewer's attention as it goes along since that's the only tactic employed here throughout the whole first hour, and the fact that he undertakes this while they have no idea of how long he's been doing things around them is so lazy and lame that it makes them look all the stupider for failing to realize what's going on. Even the few times it seems like he should be found out are written off like they're nothing, and that makes even less sense in keeping the ruse alive. All told, this makes the main villain uniformly weak and uninteresting in such a boring film. The only thing that really holds up here is the final half, which has some rather fun confrontations and stalking to go along with some pretty nasty and bloody kills, but otherwise there's little to like here.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language, Brief Nudity, a mild sex scene and children-in-danger.
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