Crawl 2 (2025): The Waters Rise Again in This Gripping Survival Horror Sequel
Six years after the surprise success of Crawl (2019), director Alexandre Aja returns with Crawl 2, a tense and thrilling sequel that expands on the original’s core premise of survival horror—but with higher stakes, new characters, and even deadlier predators. While the original film trapped its protagonists in a flooding Florida house with hungry alligators, the sequel turns the disaster into a full-blown regional crisis.
Set three years after the events of the first film, Crawl 2 follows a new protagonist: Maya Lewis (played by Jenna Ortega), a National Guard trainee sent to assist in a Category 5 hurricane evacuation in southern Louisiana. As levees break and entire towns flood, Maya and her unit are tasked with rescuing stranded civilians. But the storm isn’t the only danger—an invasive species of genetically altered alligators, displaced by experimental military research, has been released into the swamps and urban waterways.
When Maya’s unit is ambushed during a mission gone wrong, she finds herself trapped with a small group of survivors, including a wounded veteran (Boyd Holbrook), a local wildlife expert (Danielle Deadwyler), and a young girl separated from her parents. Together, they must navigate a submerged landscape filled with debris, collapsing infrastructure, and lurking predators that have become faster, smarter, and more aggressive.
Crawl 2 excels at what made the original film so effective: claustrophobic tension, unpredictable jump scares, and a relentless pace. However, this sequel ups the ante in scope. The action now spans city blocks and submerged buildings, including a particularly harrowing sequence inside a half-sunken hospital. The flooding is more severe, the survival scenarios more complex, and the alligator attacks more brutal.
Jenna Ortega shines in the lead role. Her portrayal of Maya is grounded, courageous, and emotionally resonant—balancing vulnerability with tenacity. The supporting cast also brings depth to their roles, elevating what could have been one-dimensional disaster survivors into believable, sympathetic characters.
Visually, Crawl 2 is a feast of murky waters, eerie silence, and sudden chaos. Cinematographer Maxime Alexandre returns to work with Aja, capturing both the beauty and horror of water as a setting. Alexandre Aja once again proves his skill at crafting nerve-wracking set pieces that make viewers feel just as trapped and breathless as the characters.
What separates Crawl 2 from other creature features is its emotional undercurrent. Themes of climate crisis, displacement, and human accountability run throughout the film. The inclusion of experimental alligators adds a mild sci-fi twist but is rooted enough in plausibility to maintain the film’s grounded feel.
Verdict: Crawl 2 is a worthy successor to the original—a smart, suspenseful, and well-paced horror film that expands its world without losing its intensity. While some might miss the simplicity of the first installment, this sequel dives deeper—both literally and thematically—and delivers a fresh surge of adrenaline for fans of survival horror.
