Insects - Die Brut aus dem All

Try to stay with this TV movie and you may drive yourself crazy. THRESHOLD stars Nicolas "X-Files" Lea as a scientist trying to stop an alien infestation from taking over the world. If he doesn't stop the moth-like aliens in 48 hours, the city he is rushing around in will be nuked to stop the plague from spreading. Lea is not believable as any kind of scientist, and the cast otherwise is unmemorable and generic. The only thing that saves this thing from being a "1" are some yucky scenes of alien transference that strongly resemble similar scenes in the much-beloved THE HIDDEN. The creatures have interesting claws, too, that pop out at regular intervals.

An astronaut being the carrier of alien insect seeds returns to earth and spawns a bunch of hostile moths, thus spreading the infection. The moths need human hosts to complete their evolution and... yada yada, we've heard it all before. The often ridiculed SyFy Channel - before their name-change, actually – produced this lamentable alien invasion TV-effort, resulting in a highly uninspired mess of straight-faced, cliché-driven shenanigans. Nicholas Lea and Jamie Luner run around earning their paycheck as the scientist duo figuring out ways to save mankind. Nothing remotely interesting is done with the material, and Charles Bowman's utterly bland directing is smudged by cheap cinematography and some generic CGI effects. Remind me again why I watched this?

During a space mission, an astronaut gets enveloped by some sort of cloud that is carrying alien insect DNA. He is infected, brought back to Earth, and soon gives birth to a multitude of moth-like beings that are intent on taking over the world. The two moronic humans who are supposed to help solve the problem through their research are military doctor "Geronimo" Horne (Nicholas Lea, who made his name playing Agent Krycek on 'The X-Files') and entomologist Savannah Bailey ('Melrose Place' / 'Just the Ten of Us' hottie Jamie Luner).

'Threshold' is standard-issue made-for-television genre fare. Granted, the premise of intelligent alien moths on a "take over the world" mission should make for reasonably engaging cheese, and the movie is surprisingly absorbing in the early going, with the filmmakers taking themselves fairly seriously. The story is watchable for a while, until the amount of ridiculous characters (and performances) and ridiculous moments in the script start to weigh too heavy.

Lea, who doesn't look like he gives much of a damn, is an uninspired hero. Luner, ordinarily fine eye candy, seems to have been made to look as dowdy as possible, presumably to make her at least somewhat passable in the role of a scientist. But the plot becomes less and less interesting as it goes on, it's treated with precious little enthusiasm, and it doesn't end with very much of a bang.

At least it has a few priceless moments when infected humans "bug out" and attack others, and some "ewww" inducing moments that are effective. The CGI, overall, is not the worst you'll ever see.

Five out of 10.

There's nothing much to discuss. This starts out okay, for about ten minutes, and then proceeds to get worse moment by moment. An astronaut in space is hit by small "meteorites" that turn out to be of alien insect origin and upon returning to Earth, they leave this man alone in a regular hospital with the window open. No quarantine, no security, no special attention at all. Then, two of three people who know that this is an alien life form that has not only killed the astronaut, but has also escaped through the open window, then proceed to go kayaking and biking. And this is just the beginning of the illogical parts. However, the most annoying & mystifying aspect of this is that the interesting and talented Nicholas Lea can't get better parts than this. I don't get it. Everyone I know was impressed and/or intrigued with him in The X-Files, but he never capitalized on it. What a shame.

Okay, first off, this is a Sci-Fi original. So that tells us right of the bat that this isn't exactly going to be The Empire Strikes Back. However, it did have a few good points. For example, the movie was very loyal. Whoever wrote the script knew what they where talking about, that being bugs of course. Also, the acting and effects where good in the main categories. There where also some creative twists and excellent camera work. Yet, as I said before, this isn't exactly Star Wars.

First of all, there was some pretty cheesey dialogue. Also, not the most gripping plot line. In my opinion the story kind of falls flat on it's face after the first hour or so. The ending was not at all well done. It just seemed like it was thrown together at the last possible second. Rather anti-climatic if you ask me. But then again, there wasn't much to build up on.