Movie 128: Infestation

A loser is just being fired from his job when a loud noise knocks everyone out. He awakens to find himself in some kind of webbing, and pulls another few people out before being attacked by a giant bug. With a rag tag band of survivors they try and find a way to beat the bugs that are swarming everywhere.

We never find out where the bugs came from, but that’s fine. We find out some stuff about them and there’s conveniently a few random scientist types woken up. That’s fine too. The problem is the tone.

I think this was going for an “Eight Legged Freaks” type vibe. Comedy b-movie fun with icky bugs attacking people. It never really gets there. The problem is that our puffy faced hero just isn’t all that funny. So tonally it fails, as it can’t decide whether to be properly whacky or serious.

All in all it feels a lot like a TV pilot that never went anywhere. I thought it might be another SyFy original but there was no warning company tag at the start.

The special effects are relatively decent, with a mix of practical and CGI. The acting is fine enough, though the writing is lacking. And there is one major problem. The very end.

Now I don’t generally like to spoil movie endings, and I’m not really going to here either. It’s a b-movie so you expect a b-movie ending. B-movie endings are those where there is an obvious sequel set up. This kind of has one of those, but not quite. It’s as follows:

The remaining main characters are on the street, one of them points and says “look at that”. Puffy faced hero turns and says “holy shit!”. Film ends.

We don’t SEE what the holy shit is. It just ENDS. I thought something had gone wrong with my recording. It hadn’t. That’s not a teaser ending, that’s a cheat ending. It was a final nail in the coffin for the movie really.

I wouldn’t bother with Infestation. There are better, funnier bug movies out there for you to watch. There are scarier bug movies if you’d rather see that. We don’t really need more bug movies. And this doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It’s not all bad, but its far from great…

Next up: Semi-Pro