Crawlspace | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Justin Dix |
Produced by | Justin Dix John Finemore Nicholas Sherry |
Written by | Justin Dix Eddie Baroo Adam Patrick Foster |
Starring |
Amber Clayton Eddie Baroo Nicholas Bell |
Music by | Jamie Blanks |
Cinematography | Simon Ozolins |
Edited by | Dave Redman |
Production
company |
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Distributed by |
Gryphon Entertainment (Australia) IFC Films (North America) |
Release date
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Running time
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83 minutes |
Country | Australia |
Language | English |
Crawlspace is a 2012 Australian science fiction-action-horror film directed by Justin Dix. The script was co-written by Dix, co-star Eddie Baroo, and Adam Patrick Foster. A team of elite commandos are sent to a secret military base to extract a scientific team under attack by escaped prisoners.
After receiving a distress signal, a team of elite commandos are dispatched to extract a scientific team in a secret military base. The team is instructed to shoot on sight any prisoners that they see. When they arrive, the commandos split into three teams. However, team leader Romeo (Ditch Davey) disobeys orders when he recognizes one of the prisoners, Eve (Amber Clayton), as his dead wife. Confused, Romeo asks how this is possible, but Eve claims to be suffering from amnesia and can only remember bits and pieces of her life. The others dispute this and want to kill her, but Romeo is adamant that she accompany them. After an encounter with a mutant gorilla, Elvis (John Brumpton) is killed and tensions begin to rise; the team begin to wonder what kind of experiments could have been performed at the base.
Using a security console, Caesar guides Eve to Matthews and saves Romeo and Fourpack. Matthews reveals that Eve is composed of two subjects, only one of whom consented. While watching a videotape, Eve realises that Matthews is complicit in her abduction and experiment, and, using her psychic powers, forces Matthews to kill himself. Eve then rejoins Fourpack and Romeo, but she forces Fourpack to kill himself, too. Romeo, Eve, and Caesar confront each other, and Caesar reveals that Eve was never Romeo's wife; instead, Eve has insinuated herself into Romeo's memories. Eve psychically kills Caesar and expresses her envy for the love shared between Romeo and his wife. Romeo feigns an attraction to her and tries to blow them both up, but Eve escapes. Before she escapes the facility, Eve has a flashback of seeing an alien during her operation: it is implied that somehow the scientists removed the brain or the personality of the alien and transferred it into Eve. The film ends with her witnessing the destruction of the base in the distance.
In an interview with Dread Central, Dix cited John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, and JJ Abrams as inspirations. Crawlspace was written to be a contained, paranoid story that uses genre film tropes. Production took place at Docklands Studios Melbourne over twenty-three days, and post-production took six months.