Crawl (2019)

For our money, this tightly budgeted indie horror thriller is one of the best movies in years in the animal attack genre, because it crosses animal attacks with a dire home invasion thriller. The CGI is top-notch, which allows you to focus on the exemplary storytelling by director Alexandre Aja and co-writers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen.

The film tells the story of a college swimmer (Kaya Scodelario) who goes to check on her dad (Barry Pepper) when he doesn’t answer her calls during a storm. She travels to the family’s old lakeside home, and descends into a crawlspace with the family dog.

Soon she realizes that alligators have taken refuge from the storm inside her fast-flooding house.

Quentin Tarantino has said Crawl may be his favorite movie of 2019 — generous of him, given that that’s also the year he released his own Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.