Deadly Swarm

"Deadly Swarm" Flies into Your Home on DVD
I don't even know where to begin as I sit down to review "Deadly Swarm." Here is a movie about killer wasps with absolutely no sting. I know it sounds like I'm trying to be witty, but it's the truth. Miramax and Lionsgate definitely played it smart when dumping this straight-to-DVD and Blu-ray.

Crazed scientist Jacob Schroeder (J. Patrick McCormack) stops at nothing to trap thousands of killer wasps in the jungle of Guatemala. He's convinced that the venom from their stingers can be used for medicinal purposes to fight serious illnesses. The truck they are smuggled in crashes during an attempting to transport them across the border into the U.S. The container the wasps are held in breaks open, unleashing them on the innocent citizens of a small town. American entomologist Daniel Lang (Shane Brolly) and a meddlesome writer Sandra Kern (Kaarina Aufranc) must find a way to stop them before they wipe out everything in their path.

"Deadly Swarm" does have an...

Low-budget insect horror that entertains
If you've ever seen a Sci-Fi Channel movie from back in the day, then you know already what kind of production quality to expect. But even though they are usually lower-budget films, they can still be fun. Take, for example, DEADLY SWARM, an insect-filled horror flick from 2003. This movie, while not good enough to win any awards, is entertaining and even almost clean enough to be dubbed a `family-friendly' film...almost being the key word there.

Notice above how I used `Sci-Fi Channel' instead of `SyFy Channel'. This is because the name change didn't occur until just a few years ago. As you can see, this film is 10 years old, and was thus presented during the golden age of the channel's film library.

DEADLY SWARM has some decent acting and the premise is pretty cool for the horror genre. I mean, how could any horror fan not want to see a swarm of killer wasps sting people to death? It was definitely a major selling point for me.

But...

CGI WASPS ATTACK!
It would be far too easy to slam this movie and point out the many flaws that it has the first being the tried and true method employed by weekly SyFy films involving poor CGI graphics used for the titular creature of the week. But honestly if you watched this movie for free you wouldn't be losing anything. If you bought it on the other hand you wouldn't be a happy camper.

In Guatemala a sinister bad guy threatens a tribe to locate a sacred location that contains something he thinks will save mankind. Of course all evil scientists think this way. They find the location, watch his guide killed by a trap and hear humming as the titles pull up on screen.

Fast forward and whatever it was the scientists wanted is now crated and ready to ship. He pays a stereotypical low life south of the border thug to transport the crate across the border with instructions not to open it. As the truck travels along he gets behind another slow moving truck, attempts to pass it and...

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