Survival Instincts: The Heart-Pounding Adventures of ‘Sweetheart’ & ‘Crawl’ [Double Trouble]

Surviving a horror movie requires a sheer will of the heart. Not everyone is equipped with the determination and skillset to rise above it all and conquer their monster. With summer still hanging around for another couple weeks, it’s a perfect time for some survival instincts to kick in with two of the best creature features in recent times. Both 2019 features, J. D. Dillard’s Sweetheart and Alexandre Aja’s Crawl see their lead characters fighting tooth and nail to survive not only the elements but creatures beyond their wildest imaginations.

In Sweetheart‘s heart-pounding adventure, Jenn (Kiersey Clemons) awakens to find herself stranded on a deserted island. Crystal waves slap against her skin, as she lies lifeless on the island’s idyllic shoreline. The greenery meets the baby blue sky in a cataclysmic explosion. The serenity gathers around her feet, yet the fear hangs off her face like ripped flesh. Once she gets her wits about her, she discovers her friend Brad (Benedict Samuel) succumbing to his wounds. As the life fades from his eyes, reality sinks into Jenn’s bones – this is where she’ll die fighting for her life…

Jenn smartly buries Brad’s body in a makeshift grave and covers him with palm fronds, a symbolic gesture to give his soul peace in the afterlife. Overnight, something (or someone) digs up his body and consumes it whole, leaving nothing but residual blood drops behind. Jenn panics, rattled by what could be a body-snatcher coming out of the surrounding woodlands. She could not have predicted that her midnight guest would be a humanoid sea monster with brute strength, lightning speed, and an insatiable hunger for human flesh.

With the days tumbling like dominoes into one another, Jenn recognizes that time slowly slips from her grasp. Soon, she could become the monster’s latest feast, if she doesn’t figure out a way to use its powers against it. While the scaly beast outmatches her in every conceivable way, Jenn does possess the smarts, willpower, and gumption to do what is necessary. Clemons delivers Jenn with an incredible amount of nuance and layers. She’s not only a tour de force – although, that is certainly worth celebrating as one of horror’s best heroines – but she’s rooted in human frailty. Her vulnerability peeks through the outer layers of the creature-feature to allow the audience to empathize with Jenn deeply. She’s a flawed human being, yet she uncovers her guttural strength by meeting the worst circumstances.

Trial and error, Jenn mounts various plots to lure the creature into her clutches – each attempt draws her closer to figuring out the pieces she needs to slay her underwater foil. Ultimately, she configures an elaborate set-up of pointed sticks, grass traps, and other odds and ends that confuse the monster and give her enough wiggle room to set a gnarly blaze. The fire consumes the beast, its screams jolting like fireballs into the night sky. The otherwise pristine island becomes engulfed in flames, as Jenn darts to the shoreline. The monster, severely injured, limps behind her but collapses from its wounds. In a true badass move, Jenn decapitates the sea-world creature and carries its blood-dripping head toward the raft.

‘Sweetheart’

Jenn, brought to life through Clemmons’ slippery, adept, and agonizingly emotional performance, signifies a woman who wields great intellect and an ability to adapt with great agility to her surroundings. In the great halls of horror history, she doesn’t receive enough attention as among the genre’s strongest warriors, earning her place alongside other greats like Sigourney Weaver. Jenn unflinchingly confronts her darkest fears and rises victorious, despite all odds being stacked against her. That’s the mark of a real fighter. She’d go to the ends of the world to conquer the sea beast, even if she must sacrifice part of her humanity to do so. What an underrated icon.

Haley (Kaya Scodelario) wields similar powers. In Crawl, a Category 5 hurricane rips through Florida and destroys everything in its path. Haley, a university swimmer, possesses a tough, stubborn exterior. Despite warnings from emergency personnel and her sister Beth (Morfydd Clark) to evacuate, Haley weathers the storm and heads back to her childhood home to check up on her father Dave (Barry Pepper), who hasn’t been answering his phone. When she arrives, she discovers her father severely injured and bleeding in the crawl space beneath the house.

There, lurking in the shadows, are several scaly alligators slithering in the mud. Having entered through the nearby storm drain, the creatures have only one thing on their mind: blood. Their teeth glisten in the silver light needling through the darkness. Dave barricades himself off behind several metal pipes and seems destined to die from his gaping wounds. But Haley isn’t about to let that happen. She’s a fighter with a quick mind and strong body, sinewy enough to give her the upper hand when it comes to navigating the rising flood waters. Her spirit flows with even more unwavering brawn – the kind you’re simply born with. You can’t teach the sort of strength she harbors.

With the weather on one side and the alligators on the other, Haley has her work cut out for her. She must learn what it means to truly survive and save her father and the family dog Sugar in the process. With sheer will and grit in her teeth, Haley slaughters one of the alligators with a shotgun, shoving it down its throat. That gives her the clear to swim out to the street and enter back through the home. Once inside, she uses a crowbar to rip up floorboards and whisk her father to safety. As the pair struggle to make their way upstairs, an alligator bites off his arm, blood spurting and seeping into the water below.

‘Crawl’

Haley and Dave eventually make their way up to the rooftop. There, they get a front-row seat to a ghastly sight. Waters crash and rage and swirl around them. Countless alligators swim inside the water’s relentless waves. As the film darkens to black, it appears their circumstances are as dire as ever – but a rescue helicopter zooms overhead. Haley’s distress signal does the trick, and the pair are seemingly rescued from their island in the sky. With steely determination and innately warrior-like nature, Haley emerges as one of the genre’s finest additions to the heroic, badass women catalog. She never flinched, even as things seemed to crumble around her. Even when the alligators had the upper hand, she never stopped fighting for herself, her father, and her dog. Sometimes, you have to be pushed with your back to the wall to uncover how brave and strong you really are.

Jenn and Haley are cut from the same survivalist cloth. With nothing but their instincts and minimal tools at their disposal, the dynamic duo makes damn sure they give it their all to weather nature’s cruel elements and the relentless water creatures. Through both Sweetheart and Crawl, the viewer takes a merciless trip through the roughest of circumstances that almost seem insurmountable. But human nature is a fascinating thing. When the chips are down, you’d be surprised what the body is capable of. With adrenaline kicking into overdrive, and having nothing else left to lose, human beings are surprisingly resilient.

As summer reaches its last legs, Crawl and Sweetheart make for one helluva thrilling, chest-throbbing double feature. And it may just make you think differently about that little excursion out into the ocean on a dinghy – and you might realize that sometimes, you don’t need to be brave just to prove a point.

Double Trouble is a recurring column that pairs up two horror films, past or present, based on theme, style, or story.