The Hive

This is a ridiculous albeit somewhat compelling low-budget effort at an "eco-disaster" movie. From the title you might imagine that it revolves around bees, but it is in fact about ant colonies which have developed advanced intelligence and super-powers as a result of alien intervention. The plot is mostly predictable although it does include some bizarre twists, the acting is mediocre and the special effects are not so special. That said, the premise is quite interesting - we know that ants communicate in some way and work together, but what if they got really clever? It is a mixture of "The Naked Jungle" (an oldie but goodie with Charlton Heston having to deal with "the marabunta") and "Phase IV", both of which are far better films.

Bad, bad, bad. And worse!

This flimsy piece of Sci-Fi wish-wash is so contemptuously awful, I could not suffer to watch it all. After forty minutes of mind-numbing banality, I was forced to switch it off.

So where did it go wrong? My timer indicated 00:00:30. For a start the acting was so lame, in some scenes (notably the party scene,) not even a vet could have saved it.

The CGI was quite possibly the worst set of special effects ever to have inflicted itself onto my screen. Perhaps if I'd watched it through a woolly sock after rubbing olbas oil into my eyeballs it might have looked half decent, but I'm not going to give it the satisfaction.

The plot I can't really comment on as I was fortunate enough to stop it in its tracks. However, I can say that the first forty minutes that I did see must have been written on the back of a napkin, and then accidentally washed.

The script must have been on the other side. It was so jam-packed with pointless rhetoric and hackneyed clichés that the six or seven lines that did try to drive the plot must have had delusions of adequacy.

My verdict: Maybe this was meant for the ants to enjoy.

That said, though, if I was an ant, I'd rather find a magnifying glass on a sunny day.

I don't know why I keep attempting to watch a film made by the Sci-Fi network. Somehow, I think that just maybe this one will be decent. But, as usual, it sucks! When will I learn? You can bet that when you hear the announcement, "An original Sci-Fi film" it will be the usual lame story line. Some painfully bad CGI creation of a killer creature (super sized snakes and reptiles seem to be the favorites) attacking a group isolated, stranded idiots. And when I say "painfully bad CGI", it truly is painful to watch. ("I confess, just turn the channel!") I've seen better effects from the original Nintendo games! What I find even sadder is that some of the stars who sign up for these catastrophes are ones that "I thought" were on the fast track to great careers. Actors like, Stephen Baldwin, Michael Pare, Casper Van Dien & Dean Cane to name a few seem to keep reappearing in these features. I like to think that maybe they new managers or that there is just no quality work going on.

But, you can always count on the Sci-Fi channel to be in production of another low budget cookie cutter flick. I guess you gotta take what work you can get. Unfortunately, I believe that starring in these films is just going to keep you starring in these films. So you can kiss the Oscar goodbye!!!! "The Night of the Lepus", now there's a good cheesy I could enjoy over and over again. And that starred Janet Leigh, Deforest Kelly and Stuart Whitman.....what bet did they lose?

After watching a movie, I always like to take a moment to contemplate about what I've learned from my viewing. "The Hive" taught me that if ants would ever grow self-aware of their capacities and become more organized, the human race wouldn't stand a chance for survival. That is of course the case for every insect species on this planet, if you think about it. Well, except maybe for ladybugs, because what are they going to do? Cute us to death? "The Hive" is an almost entirely computer engineered and made-for-TV creature feature about killer ants, so you know to keep your expectations rather low. On a slightly more positive note, the plot here is most similar to the underrated 70's Sci-Fi/horror gem "Phase IV", and that just happens to be the best killer ant movie ever accomplished. That particular gem also presented the hypothesis that ants, suddenly and without apparent reason, began to control and develop their intelligence with disastrous consequences for mankind. In sheer contrast to "Phase IV", however, "The Hive" lacks any sense of subtlety and plausibility. There were the 70's movie was thought-provoking and genuinely disturbing, the development of the ants in this movie is just ludicrous and exaggeratedly blown out of proportions. Set in rural Thailand, an entire region is suddenly overrun by an enormous and aggressive colony of millions and millions of ants – even different subspecies are combining their forces – that in a very short time span devour harvests, cattle and even poor villagers. The ants structure their mobility, plan their attacks, learn to set death traps and even send a spy into the brain of a hired exterminator. Later on, they even build some sort of central computer entirely out of ants and generate their own electricity. How brilliant is that? The government hires the world famous Thorax extermination team. They wear cool outfits, drive in macho hummers and use highly advanced bazookas that disintegrate a couple of hundred ants at once. This still isn't efficient enough, though, so the team leader has to go to the ants' headquarters in an island cave and "negotiate" with them. Yes, that's exactly how retarded this movie is. But hey, no further complaints from my side regarding the film's entertainment factor. Any dumb horror movie that opens with a sequence in which a mother and her three-month old infant are savagely eaten by insects is guaranteed to enjoy my full attention. "The Hive" suffers from too many boring sequences and an overload of wannabe intellectual dialogs, but the ants attacks are campy good fun. Additional warning: don't sit around and wait to see the seemingly cute girl with the impressive rack that is illustrated on the DVD cover. She doesn't appear and the film and, in fact, it doesn't contain any sleaze or nudity whatsoever. Bummer!

I'm giving this a 5 coz it did make me laugh out loud on a number of occasions.

The basic plot, killer ants. It sounded like the kind of cheap sci-fi B-movie I like, so I though I would watch it. And I was entertained for all the wrong reasons.

The acting was OK, not the worst I've seen, but I've seen a LOT better. The story was ridiculous! I mean, even to the point where; you know in Bond movies, how the bad guys does a plot exposition to Bond? Well, the 'ants' do this to the good guys of the movie...yes, the 'ants' actually tell the humans what they want! I'll not tell you how, but it is ridiculous! It made me laugh out loud.

The direction was taken from the 'how to film every camera cliché in the book' school of filming.

The end was really disappointing. They try to have a 'twist' ending, but it's more of a 'we couldn't be bothered to think of anything, so we'll resort to an obvious answer' ending.

After I saw this, I read a review that said this film has 'credibility', lol, really, it's only credible if you've never seen the 'moving image' before. If you like B-movies, that make you laugh, then you will enjoy this. If you're looking for a sci-fi/horror/action film, then this isn't for you.