Dragonwasps

After learning of her father's disappearance in the Amazon jungle while working on secret research projects, a woman and her friend enlist a group of soldiers to help them only to find their work on mutated wasps has produced fire-breathing creatures infesting the area.

This was pretty much another typical Sci-Fi Channel creature feature, so this one's pretty obvious about itself quite early and often. With the creatures' appearing to be the same bland and totally fake CGI that at least has the decency to give them a bright color design to somewhat hide the fakery, yet whenever there's a close-up of them it diminishes almost immediately. There's also the simplistic plot done hundreds of times over without variation or the rather mundane pace that deals with outside areas other than the bugs to take up the majority of the running time, thereby reducing the confrontations and interactions with the creatures and reducing the gore quotient considerably. That said, the few action scenes present are a lot of fun, generate some pretty interesting scenes within and are full of pretty wild scenarios. Of course, the finale is a bit of fun, full of explosions, gunfire-riddled shootouts and the application of one of the movie's best qualities as it uses a rather novel idea against the creatures, generating a bit of smarts in an otherwise mundane effort. All in all, it's about the same as would be expected in such an effort.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

Initially you already know what this movie will be like before you watch it, as it has low-budget monster movie written all over it. And on that aspect "Dragon Wasps" truly delivers. On all other aspects, not so much.

The story in "Dragon Wasps" is fairly generic and straight forward for a movie of this caliber. A mysterious genetic research company has been experimenting with mutations and of course something has gone horribly wrong. A scientist has gone missing in the jungle, and his daughter and her best friend venture there to find him. They encounter some American soldiers who drop all they are doing to help the two civilians go looking for a single man in the vast jungle. Cannibal locals and giant, mutated wasps all prove to be in the way for their search and rescue mission.

The effects in the movie were, well, laughable. Badly animated CGI wasps that looked anything but real. And to make matters even more 'interesting' then these wasps were able to breathe fire. Yeah, breathe fire, why not? But of course, the creature effects, as you might have guessed, is almost bound by law to be bad in these kind of movies. But moving on, there was a gun fight between the soldiers and the cannibals, where the American soldiers were pinned down at their truck. A lot of shots were fired and hit the truck, resulting in CGI animated sparks here and there, but get this, there were no bullet holes. I wonder what kind of dissolving bullets they were using.

Let's move on to the acting. Most of the acting was half-hearted or even uninspiring, as if some of the people in the movie were just there because there was nothing else available. Much can be said for Corin Nemec, who both starred and co-produced this movie, but he actually did a fairly good acting job in this movie compared to some of the countless other movies he had been in.

There isn't much to keep this movie afloat, and as such it becomes a rather boring and dull movie experience. There was a single moment where the movie shined, where one of the soldiers was making fun at Corin Nemec by mentioning some of the questionable movies he has been in. That was actually a great and funny moment. Always good with some self-irony!

That is not to say at all that Dragon Wasps is a good movie, it is a long way from that. But SyFy have done much worse than this. I cannot accuse Dragon Wasps of being dull, because the pacing was actually quite snappy. I also loved the self-ironic moment where Corin Nemec and his movies are poked fun at, while Nemec is quite good as the lead, obviously enjoying himself, while Benjamin Esterday is also appealing. On the negative side, the rest of acting is rather uninspired, the women are pretty but wooden and David Stasko grates the teeth in how bad he is. Apart from that one self-ironic moment the witty and thoughtful quality of the film's dialogue is next to nothing, and while the film has a formula it does it in a rather generic and annoyingly ridiculous way and is so clichéd that you can't help thinking that you've seen it before. The characters are not annoying as such but are not developed enough to make them relateable to the audience. The shootouts suffer from choppy editing and clumsy action. Dragon Wasps is poorly shot and edited, everything just seems so unfocused and amateurish, but the worst asset about Dragon Wasps are by far the special effects. Some of the deaths are gory, but overall the quality of the CGI is blurry and in a way unfinished-looking. The wasps especially suffer from this, and sadly they have no presence whatsoever, it gets increasingly difficult to care for the dire situations the characters go through when the threat is so weakly rendered in both look and characterisation. Overall, could've been much worse but has too many flaws to make it a good movie let alone a great one. 4/10 Bethany Cox

After learning of her father's disappearance in a South American jungle, tasty blonde entomologist Gina Humphries (Dominika Juillet) talks fellow bug-hunter Rhonda Guiterrez (Nikolette Noel) into helping her find him. When they are stopped by American soldiers patrolling the area, the girls convince the leader, John Hammond (Corin Nemec), to enlist his toughest men (and woman) to aid them in their search. Hammond fully expects trouble from the voodoo drug runners who operate in the jungle, but he isn't prepared for an attack by oversized, genetically mutated wasps.

When the script sucks, the budget is low, the cast are far from great, and the CGI is basic, the least that can be done is to inject some fun into proceedings. Joe Knee, director of Dragon Wasps, doesn't seem to understand this, his movie failing to fully embrace the absurdity of poorly rendered, six-foot-long, fire-breathing wasps attacking a group of highly trained soldiers (and two sexy scientists) in a jungle. Instead, he has his cast play it completely straight throughout, as if he were making a film to rival Arnie classic Predator. Nemec is no Schwarzenegger, Knee is no John McTiernan, and Dragon Wasps is instantly forgettable nonsense. A couple of gore effects (CGI, of course) just about prevent this turkey from getting the lowest possible score.

This is a b-movie. Everything about it screams b-movie, from the title over the cast to the fact that it's a movie about giant wasps that breathe fire! You should obviously not expect this to be a polished high-budget Hollywood blockbuster. Anyone with such expectations will be sorely disappointed, and perhaps even angry. Nope, this is a b-movie, and its qualities lie in its absurdity, flaws, and general charm. That's just the way it is with b-movies - that's what we watch them for.

The set-up is quite simple and straightforward. A mysterious research organization called Transgen Tech have been conducting genetic experiments in the jungles of Belize, which have now gone wrong and resulted in the rise of a mutant breed of giant wasps. When one of the scientists goes missing, his daughter, the archaeologist Gina (Dominika Juillet), and her friend Rhonda (Nikolette Noel) set out to find him. They team up with a group of American soldiers under the command of John Hammond (Corin Nemec) and Willy Meyers (Benjamin Easterday). The group must not only face the giant wasps, but also fight off the voodoo-practicing drug-runner Jaguar (Gildon Roland) and his gang of cannibalistic guerrillas.

With a set-up like this, the scene is set of a cliché-filled action film falling under the rubric of tropical horror. Featuring bizarre rituals, implausible science, explosions, shoot-outs, exploding heads, and wasps emerging through cavities of the human face, there is actually plenty of entertainment in this movie, which in part also owes to its fairly consistent and appealing pacing. Things never slow down too much, although there are quieter moments. Obviously, the action sequences are not all equally convincing, and the film arguably features one of the worst ever rescue missions ever in film history. The CGI-effects are, as you might expect, not very good. The depiction of wasps in flight is particularly bad, and the best CGI-rendering of a wasp is, ironically enough, encountered during the final credits.

The acting is one-dimensional across the board, but nothing else should be expected from this type of movie. Corin Nemec does a pretty good job as the film's grizzled male lead, while Benjamin Easterday successfully manages to portray the character he plays as a sympathetic and loyal person. Gildon Roland's extremely one-dimensional yet very intense portrayal of Jaguar, the main antagonist, evokes a creepiness which is just perfect for the character. Dominika Juillet and Nikolette Noel, in contrast, deliver wooden and unconvincing acting, which at times is near-robotic and at times just awkward. Of course, it doesn't help that their characters are supposed to be archaeologists when they actually look like participants in a third rate reality TV show. The dialog is, of course, completely cheesy, and, not surprisingly, not all actors are equally successful at working with such silly dialog.

At the end of the day, "Dragon Wasps" is flawed in several ways, and you should not expect a realistic film in any way. It is silly, cheesy, and charming. It has everything a b-movie should have, and fans of such movies are bound to have a fun time. I mean, it's fire-breathing wasps after all!