Threshold

Try to stay with this TV movie and you may drive yourself crazy. THRESHOLD stars Nicolas "X-Files" Lea as a scientist trying to stop an alien infestation from taking over the world. If he doesn't stop the moth-like aliens in 48 hours, the city he is rushing around in will be nuked to stop the plague from spreading. Lea is not believable as any kind of scientist, and the cast otherwise is unmemorable and generic. The only thing that saves this thing from being a "1" are some yucky scenes of alien transference that strongly resemble similar scenes in the much-beloved THE HIDDEN. The creatures have interesting claws, too, that pop out at regular intervals.

If you can accept the very odd premise, this is a pretty well-done and entertaining horror/sci-fi effort. After being struck in the arm by meteor particles, an astronaut is brought back home to a hospital, where he comes down with a fever, blurred vision and an infected hand. He dies, his finger tips split open and a swarm of moths (!) escape out the window. At a 4th of July barbecue, suburban father Frank (who has a beer-swilling, unfaithful wife, bitchy redneck sister-in-law and two kids) is attacked and eventually turned into an emotionless killer complete with long, clawed appendages that come out of his sides to grab people. He injects digestive fluids into victims and then sucks out their liquefied internal organs (mmm!) with a hollow tube that comes out of his mouth. He is also overseeing an ever-growing army of similar alien-possessed who are hiding out in a basement waiting to strike. Police are baffled finding dozens of dead bodies with broken necks, dislocated jaws and sunken in chests, but NASA chief medical examiner Jerome "Geronimo" Throrn (Nicholas Lea), tough entomologist Savannah Bailey (Jamie Luner) and others uncover a string of clues (starting with insect-like alien DNA taken from the astronaut) that they need to piece together to save the entire country. See, word has spread to other countries, who have threatened to blow the U.S. off the map with nuclear weapons if the menace isn't quickly contained! Bizarre story, some surprise plot twists, entertaining characters and good chemistry (and performances) by talented leads Lea and Luner make it enjoyable.

I realize there was a limited budget for this "straight-to-cable" movie, but for crying out loud, NOTHING in this embarrassing laugh-fest looked even remotely real!

The paper-thin plot involves some sort of "moth nebula" that infects an astronaut docked in outer-space while fixing a spacecraft just outside of Earth's atmosphere. The astronaut is hospitalized, and then starts producing 'cocoon-like' objects on his fingers that breed 'alien moths'. Next thing you know, the moths fly out the hospital window and start infecting (biting) innocent citizens all over the city who happen to share the same blood type.

TV FOX fixtures, Jamie Luner ("Melrose Place") and Nicholas Lea ("The X Files") headline this atrocious 'movie' as a bug scientist and astronaut scientist who come together to try and stop the moths from infecting people. Luner is absolutely embarrassing as the bug scientist whose big discovery towards the ending of the film is pinpointing the location of the 'bug hideout shelter' simply by coincidental means. Her brother happens to take a photo of his girlfriend while a suspicious looking character just happens to be walking by in the background (LOL), therefore giving Luner's character a big clue as to where the moth people may be hiding.

The biggest laughs of all come from the low budgeted 'special effects'. One 'infected' woman is held captive in an interrogation room. She does her best 'scared/freaking out' impression when all of a sudden, 'computer-generated' arms lash out from her sides and quickly disappear again. Considering she is fully dressed, did the producers not even care about how the arms suddenly appear, then disappear without even tearing her clothes? And the fact that the arms resembled that of a papier mache model makes the whole situation even more laughable.

Another laughable scene involves the 'thing' that is being guarded by all of the infected people. Some sort of big balloon sac with a 'human-like' being inside of it. We of course, never get to see this, because it gets blown up on a tug boat at the end of the film. This thing is supposedly the film's central object of 'horror', something that we never get to see, yet are supposed to be very scared of. I can't stop thinking about how bad this movie was!

What a stupid movie! It's not even worthy as a 'straight-to-Sci Fi Channel' film. To top it off, they even throw in the usual megalomaniacal military officer who insists on 'blowing up' the whole city to try and stop the outbreak, including all the other innocent civilians who haven't been infected. Maybe this movie should have been on Comedy Central instead?

I say, skip this trash and rent "Dog Soldiers" instead. This movie was a total joke.

My Grade - 1 out of 10

An astronaut being the carrier of alien insect seeds returns to earth and spawns a bunch of hostile moths, thus spreading the infection. The moths need human hosts to complete their evolution and... yada yada, we've heard it all before. The often ridiculed SyFy Channel - before their name-change, actually – produced this lamentable alien invasion TV-effort, resulting in a highly uninspired mess of straight-faced, cliché-driven shenanigans. Nicholas Lea and Jamie Luner run around earning their paycheck as the scientist duo figuring out ways to save mankind. Nothing remotely interesting is done with the material, and Charles Bowman's utterly bland directing is smudged by cheap cinematography and some generic CGI effects. Remind me again why I watched this?

Okay, first off, this is a Sci-Fi original. So that tells us right of the bat that this isn't exactly going to be The Empire Strikes Back. However, it did have a few good points. For example, the movie was very loyal. Whoever wrote the script knew what they where talking about, that being bugs of course. Also, the acting and effects where good in the main categories. There where also some creative twists and excellent camera work. Yet, as I said before, this isn't exactly Star Wars.

First of all, there was some pretty cheesey dialogue. Also, not the most gripping plot line. In my opinion the story kind of falls flat on it's face after the first hour or so. The ending was not at all well done. It just seemed like it was thrown together at the last possible second. Rather anti-climatic if you ask me. But then again, there wasn't much to build up on.