The historic snowstorm that dumped two feet of snow on us over the weekend was a great excuse to watch movies. Today’s film review is one I’ve been really excited to see for awhile: Locusts: The Eighth Plague (2005).
One of the reasons I like to watch insect horror films is to gain an understanding of the way humans perceive the insect world. I also just like to watch them. For more insect horror film reviews on this blog, you can search “Reel Bugs.”
The plot, in brief, goes something like this: a handsome, square-jawed entomologist with gel in his hair named Colt Anderson teams up with his fiancée, Vicky Snow, who is (I think) a veterinarian who works for the public health authorities, to stop a swarm of predatory, carnivorous locusts.
These genetically engineered locusts have escaped from a top-secret facility somewhere in Idaho, and they’re the size of TV remotes. The evil corporate scientists bred this flesh-eating strain for vaguely unspecified reasons. The swarm starts attacking people, and bodies pile up. Colt and Vicky must contain the disaster and stop the swarm from splitting, breeding, and taking over ALL OF NORTH AMERICA.
Inexplicably, Colt and Vicky have a great deal of authority over the USDA SWAT-team guys that show up by helicopter and set up a high-tech command center in the center of town. I mean, sure, there’s the overzealous military guy who insists on deploying a sinister government pesticide to stop the menace, but even he defers to Colt and Vicky. Vicky is a stock character of the genre: the hot, 20-something female scientist with an advanced degree. But despite their efforts, the swarm continues to breed and multiply and attack and eat people.
There’s a pretty laughable scene after about fifty people have been eaten alive, where Colt sits by a lake, tossing pebbles contemplatively into the water. Clad in her signature tight camisole and jeans, Vicky puts her arms around him and asks him what’s bothering him. Um, how about the fact that fifty good citizens from Idaho have been reduced to Hamburger Helper? Colt gives an impassioned speech about how man shouldn’t tamper with nature, adding something about global warming.
I think my favorite line, though, is one of Vicky’s. After the swarm has attacked more people, she grabs the phone from an underling in the command center and says, “This is Vicky Snow. I need a list of all the outdoor activities going on today, and I need it now.”
A lot of people get reduced to bloody mush, but the effects are so hokey, you just get the impression that a lot of barbecue sauce was spilled in the making of the film.
I won’t give away the ending, but it involves some scientific gobbledygook nonsense about activating a pheremone lure that the locusts must respond to “because it’s hard wired into their genetic makeup.”
This is a low-budget movie, and the filmmakers definitely borrowed some ideas. There’s a scene where the locusts attack a picnicking family and the young boy only just makes it to the confines of their SUV where he then watches his mom and dad get devoured. He drives away, crashes the car, and then enters a semi-catatonic state because he’s so traumatized by what he has just witnessed.
Well. Practically that exact scene occurred in a previous movie, The Swarm (1978), where bees overpower a family picnic and only the son escapes with his life and he, too, drives away, crashes the car, and enters a semi-catatonic state because he’s so traumatized by what he has just witnessed. And an even earlier movie, Them! (1954), has a little girl who is traumatized by having seen her parents get eaten by giant ants, but it being a 1954 production, the eating happens off-camera.
You know what’s the scariest part? The fact that I knew all that.
You can–cough!–click through to read my previous reviews of The Swarm and Them! if you happen to be a fellow insect horror-film buff.