They Nest

Supergenres are genres that are so mature that the story is so predictable that it becomes a wrapper for a story within, or a situation within that is the implicit focus. The enclosing supergenre here is a bug horror movie. Its formulaic as it should be. Ho hum.

The situation within is a town populated dually with simple good folk, all extreme stereotypes denoted in the briefest of shorthands: the warm old woman who here is also the schoolmarm, in charge of the island's kids. The dumb old man who is borderline senile. The tough but honest town cop who by himself keeps the rest of the town in line. And that whole rest of the island? Well, they are 30 year old high school male dropouts, unemployed drunks with no sense whatever.

Normally these guys would be associated with some Southern setting, Confederate flags and perhaps some indication of sexual deviance or inbreeding. But here they are in the rural north, a relocation that underscores the importance of the stereotype apart from place. It makes the fact that they are drunken dopes significant.

In the midst of this is our woman, the whole point of this inner story. I'm interested in this because of all the actresses they could have chosen, the thousands upon thousands who could handle this slight part, they chose a specific type. They chose her because of how she looks — there can be no other reason. She's a redhead. She's a redhead of a specific type.

I'm interested in narrative structure, patterns, templates and bits of the visual grammar we use to covey complex notions by reference. Women in film are the most complex when it comes to this but within women and film, redheads are the simplest case. So I have a serious study of redheads underway, and what they mean if terms of shorthand, and how that shorthand references folding.

I think there are only a few slots for redheaded women. There's the freckled, sometimes almost pigtailed, puffylipped womanchild. There's the sexually powerful, tempestuous woman, sometimes self-destructive. She seems to be modeled on a sort or aristocratic face: significant forehead and eyes — and represented by women who know how to act with their upper face instead of the lower.

And there's a sort of in between, the girl-next-door type who represents possibilities, who carries latent qualities of these extremes and others, but who is happy in the theatrical representation of simply being a representation.

So, our character here is played by Kristen Dalton. Her qualities as an actress are that she has a pronounced chin and a magnificent, aristocratic bearing. She's learned to move with that chin — actually her mouth — as the center of gravity. She isn't a great actress but she does act with her eyes. In other words, she understands a redhead's place in film, and knows how to exploit it. Why do I focus on this one redheaded actress? Because Scorsese saw her (in this, I think) and cast her as Nicholson's girlfriend in his own movie about movies and acting, curiously titled unless you know his intent.

So we will see a lot of Kristen, and we will see her BE red and tell us red.

The key elements of the story here have her as essentially the only woman in a town of dopey rednecks. All are single of course. She holds her own, being the soul of the school, the chief merchant (you literally can't buy anything unless you find her), and the color at the docks, running a forklift.

There's a big city doctor in the story but he's there only to notice her and draw her into the story. She circulates among the dopes. That's the story: her among the dopes.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

There is no mistaking the B-movie genre that this film neatly sits. The qualities of which will automatically make it loved by some, loathed by others, and for the majority, just exact a simple shrug of the shoulders.

I liked the film, the acting wasn't terrible, and in places could be classed as quite admirable. The characters themselves weren't original, but then I wasn't expecting any different, and the script didn't make me cringe, but it also remains forgettable.

The elements that did surprise, were the above par special effects and the score.

The bugs were honestly creepy and apart from anything else, a level of common sense was made about their appearance. They looked like bugs, they didn't have horns, they didn't have glowing eyes, they were perfectly normal bugs, uping the realism and therefore increasing the creeps.

The score by Vinny Golia is inventive, and although lacking a main theme, underscored the film to good effect, keeping the audience perfectly in sync with the director's intentions.

What the film did need.... humour. Yes they were jokes here and there, but none really hit the mark, and when you look at the B-movie horror monster genre, the films that become worthy of the term "Cult" usually contain copius amounts of laughs, for example, "Deep Rising" and "Lake Placid". That is by no means saying that if the script was more humourous it would elevate this film to "Cultdom", but it might have given it a helping hand.

Not at all scarey. The acting in this bug flick wasn't that bad, but haven't we all about had it with the lone hero going to a small town battling creatures as well as the locals(almost always so called "rednecks")? Story wasn't all that believable, but hey, I knew that going in. Pretty entertaining for a late night watch. Helluva lot better than watching anything on broadcast tv (can I get an Amen?). Would I rent it again, or buy it, I think not. But I would say that it was worth the $2.99 I paid to rent it for a week.

I am not a big fan of "critter flicks" as I find them to be stupidly acted and the insects unrealistic. Surprisingly, this movie kept me interested. I think one of the reasons was because of the great cast of male leads (Thomas Calabro - playing another doctor; John Savage - playing the embittered island electricman; and Dean Stockwell - playing the honest Sheriff). Even though it was your typical plot about a rare bug breeding in a corpse which washes up on a distant shore, the remainder of the story wasn't as predictable as usual. It's also humorous at times when watching city boy Dr. Cahill (Calabro) adjust to laid back island living while trying to gain acceptance from the townspeople who don't like him. Finally, I thought the bug scenes were realistic and I liked the different ways the bugs were used in various scare scenes. Admittedly, I only watched this movie once, but I would watch it again.

Despite the low rating, I found this TV-film actually not that bad at all. It's about a stressed doctor, who has to take an unvoluntary vacation, so he goes to an island in Maine, where the locals are not very friendly towards strangers. Soon he discovers that some dead people have strange marks on their bodies, and after that he finds out that some insects, looking like cockroaches, have caused these marks. The insects are very deadly, but how is DR. Ben Cahill going to convince the locals of the serious problems....

I almost thought that the story for "They Nest" was written by Stephen King, because of the location, on a small island off the coast of Maine. Also 'cause I saw two actors who played in SK-films before: Dean Stockwell (The Langoliers), and Jeffrey DeMunn (Storm of the century, Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile), who only has a small part, on the ferry to the island. The fact that the movie takes place in Maine, creates a certain feeling, like in a Stephen King movie. Therefore I thought that this film was not bad at all!