Today’s insect horror film review: Swarmed (Reel One, 2005), not to be confused with The Swarm (Warner Brothers, 1978) which I reviewed here.

I  found this movie to be a real guilty pleasure. I’m pretty scared of yellow jackets, so I also thought it was kind of scary.

The premise is pretty standard–residents of a small town find themselves menaced by a swarm of hyper-aggressive, mutant killer yellow jackets, which were genetically altered in an experiment-gone-wrong. The scientist whose experiment went wrong (played by an embarrassed-looking Michael Shanks) realizes he has caused some sort of a genetic mutation, making the wasps much more venomous and aggressive. Then a janitor–ethnically ambiguous but vaguely-Latino-looking–is dumb enough to knock his coffee over and release the killer wasps. So therefore, according to B-movie logic, he deserves to get stung to death. Then the swarm gathers more and more members and forms a cloud of killer wasps and descends on the town, inexplicably attacking and killing anyone who happens to be barbecueing.

In true genre fashion, people try all kinds of dumb and ineffectual ways to kill the wasps. The swarm gets shot at with shotguns (??), blasted with flame-guns, and pouffed with deadly clouds of pesticide, but nothing works until someone finally blows up the, um, entire swarm. Sorry if I spoiled that for you, but don’t worry, the ending has a twist.

Swarmed has its share of stock characters– a corrupt mayor, a corrupt businessman, a corrupt Chief of Police, and a hot female entomologist (Carol Alt). She keeps taking off her glasses and shaking her mane of glossy brown hair, and then delivering ludicrously nonsensical scientist-speak. There’s a jive-turkey-talking black exterminator who manages to get stung multiple times and survive (even though other characters die quite dramatically after being stung only once), and then ends up saving the day, sort of, at the end. The extras get to do a lot of running and falling down.

One of my favorite characters is the heads-up cop, Officer Heydon, who puts two-and-two together after three people have been stung to death in 24 hours and demands answers from the scientists at the lab. Of course, he tries to warn his corrupt Chief of Police that the town is about to be attacked by a swarm of killer wasps, but does the corrupt Chief listen to him? No—so he deserves to die, of course. Officer Heydon has amazing Elvis hair, but he kind of disappears halfway through the movie and we’re not sure what becomes of him. I hope he didn’t get stung.