SomeoneMovie Review - Locusts: The 8th Plague
July 21st 2009 03:40
Part 1 of the Sci-Fi Crock-Of-Shit Double Whammy!
Premise: A company genetically engineers locusts that are carnivores, trying to make them eat bugs off crops as an alternative to pesticides. Predictably, they escape captivity, and start eating people.
First up, sorry for the hiatus. I have been having some internet issues, but the reviewing machine that is Evil Pleasures is in full swing. I have a fresh batch of godawful movies for your twisted entertainment, beginning with some trash offerings from the Sci-Fi channel.
I blame my tolerance of Sci-Fi on Altered (Which I review here). Altered was a decent flick... however, Locusts is not, for a number of reasons.
The acting ranges from wooden to terrible, without a single decent performance over the whole movie. I really, honestly wanted the locusts just to eat everyone after the first 5 minutes so that the movie could be over and done with... but they managed to drag it out for another hour and a half, much to my dismay.
Likewise, the script is terrible. The dialogue is horrible, and combined with the horrible delivery is in some scenes laughable. The writer also wasn't bothered with that whole 'plausibility' thing, so they didn't bother to include it. For example, the locusts are attracted to pesticide, and only kill people because of the residual pesticide in their bodies (I know, right?). Also, the locusts seem to have this magical ability to fly straight through people... some of the silliest scenes in the movie are seeing a person get hit by a locust and having the bug explode out of their back. Also, from what I know about locusts, they eat everything and leave nothing behind. Well not these locusts, oh no! For some reason they like leaving behind half-eaten corpses.... for no reason at all. Oh, and my personal favourite: The locust swarm is comprised entirely of drones, which cannot breed. However, the swarm somehow manages to breed... somehow, which is never explained. It's these kind of stupid plot holes that are the result of nothing more than lazy writing that really ruin the movie, although there wasn't alot there to ruin...
In what seems to be a running thing with Sci-Fi Channel movies, the effects are almost all CGI, and terrible. Totally unconvincing. There are a few crappy bug props, but these too are just... well... crappy.
I think the problem here stems from the fact that Sci-Fi is, after all, a TV network. They make shows for TV, and I am renting/buying expecting something more. Locusts is mindless entertainment, exactly what you would expect to see on TV, with little thought or effort put into making quality cinema. Sci-Fi has adopted the quantity over quality approach, convinced that their audience would rather see endless crappy movies rather than repeats of fewer quality movies. While this may work on TV... it doesn't for stand-alone movies.
Take HBO, for instance. They make quality shows, but repeat them all the damn time. Back when I had cable, you could easily see the same movie 7 or 8 times in a week.
Overall... possibly worth watching if you are stuck at home on a rainy day with absolutely nothing else to do. Other than that, ignore it.
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