Locusts : La Huitième Plaie

A swarm of bio-engineered locusts escape from a research centre in Bulgaria - sorry, I mean Idaho - and have a taste not for crops but for flesh! I expected this to be yet another bad Sci Fi creature feature and while this is hardly a good film I certainly would not call it terrible either, hence my 5/10. Acting wise the leads - Dan Cortese, Jeff Fahey & Julie Benz - do a good enough job. Some of the minor roles were played by Europeans & this does show. Lots of cheap CGI here including helicopters (I've seen more realistic ones on video games). Plenty of gaffs too - many of the vehicles are obviously European; there's a scene where our hero is driving along a dirt track but when the camera is inside his vehicle it's obvious that it was filmed on a proper road, buildings & other vehicles are visible. What I do like about this film is that it's not played with tongue in cheek, nor is it unintentionally fun. It's actually played straight & when the locust descend on human victims it is done efectively to scare.

As I sat down to watch the 2005 movie "Locusts: The 8th Plague", I must admit that I weren't having much of any high hopes for the movie. Why? Well, the movie have a rather low IMDb rating. And let's just be honest, the cast ensemble wasn't exactly screaming high-end production worth here.

But still, I do enjoy monstrous creature features, so of course I sat down to watch "Locusts: The 8th Plague". But I can't claim to have been overly impressed or particularly entertained.

The storyline is pretty straight forward and generic actually, for better or worse. So you know exactly how this movie will play out and writer D. R. Rosen didn't even once veer off the generic path of how-to-make-a-killer-insect-movie blueprint. And it was something that the movie suffered from, leaving not much of anything for director Ian Gilmour to work with.

Movies such as "Locusts: The 8th Plague" need proper special effect, which was something that it actually didn't have. The locusts looked like something taken out of a mid-1990s computer game. Fairly horrible CGI textures, and not once did I actually buy into the feeling of this being a swarm of dangerous mutated locusts. It just didn't work out, and it took away so much enjoyment from the movie.

Now, I can't claim to be much of a fan of actor Dan Cortese.. But I must say that when I saw David Keith and Jeff Fahey on the screen, I thought that maybe, just maybe, the movie could pick up. But no, it didn't, and they had small and rather insignificant roles that hardly mattered for the outcome of the movie as a source of entertainment.

If you enjoy movies about killer animals - or insects, as it is with the case of this 2005 movie - do yourself a favor, and don't waste your time on "Locusts: The 8th Plague", because it just doesn't offer anything to the genre that haven't already been done and seen, and done and seen better in other similar movies.

My rating of "Locusts: The 8th Plague" lands on a three out of ten stars.

I have made no secret of disliking SyFy's movies, but I still watch them to see if they ever make anything tolerable. They've made a few, but a vast majority of them are not worth bothering with. And that is the case with Wild Swarms, which has everything I hate about SyFy and more. The acting is really uninspired, even from Jeff Fahey, who has saved a bad movie more than once but not this time, with David Keith trying and failing to give credibility to a one-dimensional and stereotypical a villain as you could get and Dan Cortese a wooden lead. The rest of the characters are also clichéd and none of them are likable in any way. Wild Swarms is also badly made, I have often criticised SyFy's films for having choppy or hackneyed editing, Wild Swarms's editing is an insult to those words, while the special effects, of which the film is heavily reliant on, are terrible never once coming across as believable. The dialogue is cheesy and stilted, the direction is lazy and the story is predictable, often ridiculous and with all the morality I am going to set a task to find a more preachy SyFy movie than this one, my prediction is that I'm never going to find it. Overall, an awful movie that is difficult to begin criticising as everything is wrong with it. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Deep in rural Idaho, a swarm of genetically-enhanced Locusts escape from the government lab that they're being held in to wreck havoc on and eat the skin of pretty much everything they come across. It's up to local organic pesticide inventor Colt (Dan Cortese AKA: Dan Dan the Whopper Man Aka: Tony the Mimbo) and his girlfriend, Vicky (Dexter's Julie Benz, who should've known better) to find a way to take care of this '8th Plaque'

Filled to the brim with extremely hokey CGI (locust, blood, helicopters & even fire) and not much else, this is definitely not one of the better Sci-Fi Original films (I outright refuse to use the word 'SyFy') that I've seen by a long shot. The acting is bad all the way around, a very unconvincing story, and the fact that the film goes on too long all combine to make a rather unpleasant viewing experience for anyone, like myself, gullible enough to sit through it. David Keith should have been a Lord of Discipline and said no to his role in the film as both he and Jeff Fahey embarrass themselves here.

My Grade: D-

Image Entertainment DVD Extras: 3 short (and rather lame) 'before & after' special effects shots

I had to watch this film twice - simply because I fell asleep during the first viewing! It really is awful! The film is heavily dependant upon CGI throughout, but, unfortunately, they appear to have been composed on a ZX80 - they are diabolical.

And the acting??? That surely is a contradiction in terms! It is sooooooo wooden! If this film had been made in black and white 50 years ago, it might be classed as a decent B movie, but with today's standards? Absolute pap! 2/10 only because the first 5 minutes actually lull you into thinking it will be a decent movie to watch: at least, I was fooled! DG