Swarmed

Another day, another Sci Fi Channel TV movie, this time from Canada. SWARMED is, unsurprisingly enough, a film about killer wasps, although it's not enough for them to be mere killer wasps. They're genetically engineered killer wasps, don't you know, ones which escape from the lab and go on a low budget rampage for the film's duration.

You get exactly what you expect in a film like this and nobody disappoints you. Director Paul Ziller has made a string of cheap and cheesy movies with titles like ICE QUAKE, STONEHENGE APOCALYPSE, and SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION, and SWARMED fits into his resume quite neatly. It's certainly not one of his better films as this isn't even so-bad-it's-good kind of viewable for half the time as there are long boring stretches where nothing much happens.

The usual B-movie flaws of bad special effects are present here (the appalling CGI is something to behold), along with wooden acting from the lead star Michael Shanks. The old-timer part is played by Tim Thomerson with less screen time than they usually give to these familiar faces. The film follows the age-old storyline that originated in the likes of JAWS and PIRANHA and never for a moment does it offer anything out of the ordinary.

If you enjoy your typical genetically altered insect turned into environmental catastrophe movie, then you will like Swarmed. Begins with run of the mill experimentations that are inadvertently foiled by the ever clumsy custodial engineer. For his part, the janitor pays dearly and hence begins the death toll for an innocent unsuspecting town. The absurdity of the story multiplies as quickly as the town folks death count yet somehow only serves to further augment the entertainment value.

The movie's story revolves around an impending barbecued hamburger contest which co-incidentally and conveniently is exactly what the wasps are attracted to....yum....love that sauce!! This meat fest occurs in a tasty slice of small town America wrought with corruption, stupidity, and greed - bad combination for city and event planning, great combination for carnage. No worries for the citizens though, the local professor of entomology (doesn't every small town have one?), that also happens to be thank goodness a hotty, will piece it all together with help from the lab scientist that engineered the original overly aggressive easily antagonized wasps.

This is a definite must see if you ever wanted to see an administrative assistant hunt city hall for a wasp with a double barreled shotgun. Quite impressive!! Equally impressive was the actual cook off where pandemonium strikes as the meat hungry wasps arrive. Kudos to Tim Matherson for masterful cameo - good to see he hasn't totally lost his B stature which he strongly enforces in the scene where he knocks over the mother and her baby stroller while trying to escape - well done Tim.

Overall, it is much better than you might expect.

This movie handles about a wasp-invasion in a little town called Dundas, Indiana. I'm not sure if the town has a high-school football team, but if they do, they should rename themselves the Dundas Yellow-jackets and adopt a guy in giant wasp suit as their mascot! Just an idea...

"Swarmed!" is a typically made-for-TV killer-insect horror flick from the early 2000s. That doesn't automatically make it terrible, it simply means you must take into account a few standard shortcomings, like clumsy and cheap-looking CGI effects, derivative storylines, barely any (intentional) humor, and pretty poor performances.

A local research institute experiments with a new type of pesticide against yellow-jacket wasps, but it doesn't really work as planned, since the liquid makes the critters even more aggressive and their first sting deadly already. As a matter of course, bottles accidentally get mixed up, and a killer swarm of yellow-jackets heads towards town to partake in the annual BBQ-contest.

There we have the inevitable "Jaws"-copy! The mayor, sponsor and chief of police obviously refuse to cancel the town's big publicity event, and they'll live to regret it! "Swarmed" is a silly and insignificant creature-feature, but fun enough to watch once thanks to a couple of hopelessly idiotic moments. There's a notable sequence in which the mayor's secretary goes after a single wasp with a shotgun, and for some reason the wasps seem to specifically target the "bad people". While hundreds of people are running around and form easy targets, the yellow jackets prefer to kill the sponsor who ingeniously hid himself in a barrel of water. Smart wasps!

Swarmed is a long way from the worst movie I've ever seen, but it was to me still rather lame. The photography and scenery are quite good though, as is the decently spooky music and the acting, Richard Chevolleau especially is a lot of fun. While the characters are very clichéd with not much development to them, they thankfully didn't annoy me as much as I feared they would. Apart from it, Swarmed just doesn't cut it. The special effects are very cheesy and cheap, while the wasps are nowhere near menacing enough for my tastes. The dialogue is constantly awkward and the comical moments(mainly at the banter and the stereotyping of Tiny) feel forced and annoying. On top of that, complete with a predictable ending and a lack of suspenseful atmosphere or a sense of genuine horror the story plods like mad, it does take ages to get going and when it does it's too late and I didn't care anymore. All in all, not terrible but just didn't buzz for me. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Okay, so this is not a great movie, but I have to admit I was engaged through the whole 90 minutes. It was also one of those rare creatures in that it was made for TV and never made it to TV, it went straight to the Movie Channel. You have to be tipped off by the size of the budget when the 'big' confrontation scene should have thousands of extras milling around but you can actually count them- less than 30 by my count. I'm a fan of any mutated creature film: fish, insects, rodents, whatever, so I HAD to watch this one. The special effects were pretty good for the most part but not great. The acting is also not great but less wooden that in all those '50's movies I love like Them and Kronos. There are holes in the plot you could drive a wasp through but without them there wouldn't be a movie. And by 'them' I mean both plot-holes and wasps. I think if you are a fan of mutated creature movies it won't supplant your favorites but because there aren't that many made you have to see it. If you aren't a fan, give it a pass because it doesn't have any interesting sub-plots (it doesn't actually have any sub-plots) to keep you interested.