“Crawl” (2019) is an often corny creature feature that still delivers the scares quite nicely, given its decent special effects and its successful mashup of man-vs.-nature plots.  (Our father and daughter protagonists here must face off not only against the movie’s reptilian horrors, but also against the hurricane that conspires to aid the lizards’ hunt.)  Our heroes are portrayed by the terrific Barry Pepper and Kaya Scodelario, both of whom are better than the script’s forced and clunky family drama.

But the real stars here are the alligator-related catastrophes that we bought a ticket to see, and those are inventive and fun.  The movie feels like a particularly creative 10-year-old playing with his toy alligators in his sister’s dollhouse — but I mean that in a good way.  It totally works.  I jumped a couple of times, and that’s a pretty good sign that a horror movie is working.

I’d rate “Crawl” an 8 out of 10, and I’d cheerfully recommend it to someone looking for a decent new summer monster movie.