Trying to get through a draining heat wave, a woman comes to believe that a local weirdo that lives in the neighborhood who everyone has dubbed The Cicada Man has somehow managed to infect her with the voracious insects and tries to dig them out of her body however she can.
Overall, this one was a rather solid extreme exploitation effort. One of the more likable aspects of this one is the creepy setup that lets everything play out in a fantastic playground. As so much of the first half relies on her trying to get through life while dealing with several intriguing issues surrounding it all, the psychological breakdown that occurs feels earned and logical. From the endless conversations with her friend about how the heat is getting to her, the normal stress of her job and everyday life, we get a clear idea of what she's going through which all puts her quite close to the edge. This lowered sense of sanity and reality is pushed by The Cicada Man's arrival since her slipping sanity also coincides with the arrival of the visuals and the manifestation of her hate having a physical manifestation offers up a great idea. The end result of this building ground is a fine series of brutal and excessively graphic sequences. Slowly starting with the idea that the insects are crawling over her, she begins clawing and scratching at her arms, shoulders, and back which produces unsightly marks due to the intensity and severity displayed. The further it goes along, she switches tactics to forcefully removing what she believes to be insect parts inside of her requiring even more gnarly sequences of prying open her skin to have access to the bugs inside her. This is capped off with the final confrontation that takes place between her and The Cicada Man in his apartment brings about a grisly transformation and rather effective work on the constant wounds and sores that emerge as a result of the battle that takes place. These features combine to give the film a lot to like about it while there are some drawbacks that hold it down. Among its few issues are mainly centered on a bizarre narrative ploy that leaves a lot of this somewhat confusing. Introducing a backstory for who The Cicada Man is and his connection to her through a shared past is a fine touch, but this brings about an unnecessary mudding of the story. We've seen her slicing herself up and going crazy psychologically due to no one else believing her story, yet this setup implies he's been controlling everything from the start to torment her with genuine bugs that were really there. Attempting to explain everything as being in her head only to then say the bugs were genuinely there is a missed opportunity by not being clear about what's happening. As well, there's also the somewhat overlong battle that takes quite a while to play out taking the fight through several exaggerated sequences that are a bit too long, but otherwise, there's not a lot to dislike here.
Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence and Language.
