Animals don't necessarily have the best luck when it comes to creature features, so does Crawl's adorable dog Sugar survive the movie? Alexandre Aja made his debut with French slasher movie High Tension - AKA Switchblade Romance - which was a nail-bitingly tense thriller that was somewhat undone by its dumb final act twist. Still, the movie got the young filmmaker noticed and he was soon collaborating with Wes Craven on 2006's remake of The Hills Have Eyes and he later helmed 2010 gorefest Pirahna 3D, another horror remake.
He went back to his horror roots with 2019's Crawl, a stripped out survival thriller where a woman named Haley is trapped with her father Dave in a house during a Category 5 hurricane. Unfortunately, the rainy weather is the least of their problems, as they're also besieged by some very aggressive alligators. Crawl is an intense and scary ride with several great setpieces and it's grounded by great performances from leads Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper.
Outside of the lead actors Crawl is also fronted by Dave's dog Sugar, who leads Haley to the crawlspace where her father has been wounded by the alligators in the first act. Of course, having a cute dog in a mean-spirited horror movie with hungry alligators doesn't tip the scales in favor of Sugar making it to the end credits; which is why it's such a pleasant survive that the dog survives the movie in one piece.
Maybe the most subversive thing about Crawl is that all of the main characters make it out at the end. Sugar has the easiest time of it, though poor Dave loses an arm during an alligator attack in the final act. In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Alexandre Aja admitted they toyed with several different fates for Sugar in the script, including a character sacrificing him to save someone else, or the dog losing a limb but surviving. Aja ultimately realized that since audiences hate seeing dogs die in a movie, there would be an underlying tension about his fate, which is why Sugar makes it to the end.
From I Am Legend to Aja's own remake of The Hills Have Eyes, horror films aren't above killing a dog for the sake of shock, so it's nice to see Sugar get a happy ending in Crawl. The movie was a solid success but while Aja has stated he's open to making a follow-up it would be hard to see the original characters returning for another round, so Sugar will be likely be sitting any sequels out.