Odd mildly watchable effort aside, The Asylum's near-universally maligning is more than well deserved. Despite a vast majority of their films being weak or worse, many are irredeemably terrible, there is something compulsive about their badness and the curiosity as to whether they are capable of churning out a film that rises above okay. To me they have done, but very, very sporadically.
'Hornet', feeling very much derivative to the point of being a rip-off of the relatively recent 'Bumblebee' though actually released before to capitalise upon it (with the advertising there can be some very understandable confusion), is another one of their irredeemably terrible efforts. Many people hate the 'Transformers' films and 'Bumblebee' has its detractors too, but watching 'Hornet' people may find themselves appreciating those films more, certainly did so myself. Regardless of any flaws those films have, and oh there are plenty, they are nowhere near as many in quantity or as large in quality in comparison to this thing.
It's a cheap looking film for starters. Found the found footage, for me that is so overused in film and has often been executed poorly, look of the filming excessive in use and nausea-inducing when looking at it. Watched the film not reading any reviews beforehand and not expecting that, and as someone with epilepsy it made me uncomfortable, but continued to watch in order to be fair to the film. The photography and the haphazard editing just looked so amateurish and rendered some of what is going on incoherent, it looks drab too. The special effects for the titular character are very cheap and very obvious in look with inconsistent size and height and very sloppy movement. The titular character too is not a compelling one with very little personality and is not used very well.
Music is little more than a repetitive intrusive slog and there is no competence at all in the direction. None of the human characters have anything interesting or distinct about it and some of it even grate. Also having to spout some of the most cliched, dumbest, blandest and stilted gobbledegook in any of The Asylum's films and of any film in recent years. The acting has no character at all and it looked very half-hearted. There is absolutely nothing thrilling, tense, suspenseful, emotionally investable or fun about the story, or what little there was of it. What the film promises in its summary has barely any screen time and makes no impression whatsoever. The predictability may have been forgivable if the film was actually engaging let alone exciting but it fails to be either, with a severely undercooked final 20 minutes that should have excited and instead fizzles completely, and even coherence is not always a strong suit and that's putting it lightly.
Pacing is incredibly dull throughout, with no signs of any real energy, and descends far too early into intelligence-insulting ridiculousness. Complete with unintentional humour because of the excessive cheese and increasingly irritating and illogical character behaviours that makes one endear to them even less in a film with not one interesting or rootable character. It may have been slightly entertaining at first but got tiring as the film limped along with everything being executed so blandly and half-heartedly, like no effort was being made. The very sparse action is far from thrilling, confusingly choreographed, performed with no real engagement or ease with it, sloppy editing and a pedestrian pace.
Concluding, terrible. 1/10
