11/8/15 (Part One): You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Swatter

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Adam Aresty, Benni Diez, caterer, Cecilia Pillado, cinema, Clifton Collins Jr., creature feature, Daniele Rizzo, Eve Slatner, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, first-time screenwriter, garden parties, giant insects, giant wasps, horror, horror films, Jessica Cook, killer wasps, Lance Henriksen, Matt O'Leary, monster movies, Movies, mutations, Stung

Aren’t garden parties just the worst?! I mean, you spend all that time working on the perfect guest list, getting just the right mix of society’s finest together so that they can bask in the glory of each other’s existence and then you still have to hire the help, pick out the table arrangements, find suitable entertainment and be the supervisor (as if the caterers could actually be expected to know what they’re doing, the silly things!). Factor in worrying about the weather and making sure that the Mayor’s glass is always full and that’s a full-time job! And then…just when everything seems like it’s running smoothly…giant, mutant wasps show up and sting your guests in their faces! And they say the bourgeoisie have it easy!

As can probably be assumed from the above, first-time director Benni Diez’s Stung (2015) is, indeed, about a posh garden party that gets summarily wrecked by a horde of genetically-altered, over-sized and patently lethal wasps. We follow our dual protagonists, Julia (Jessica Cooks) and Paul (Matt O’Leary), as they arrive at said garden party, ready for work: the former has just inherited a catering business from her recently deceased father while the latter is her sole employee and potential love interest.

We meet the hosts of the party, pharmaceutical baron Mrs. Perch (Eve Slatner) and her weird, twitchy son, Sydney (Clifton Collins Jr., channeling Neil Hamburger), as well as their guests, including the town’s elderly mayor (Lance Henriksen, looking sleepy but having lots of fun). Once all that’s out of the way, we’re then introduced to the mutant wasps, which proceed to decimate said party in pretty rapid fashion: in a particularly gruesome development, even larger wasps burst out of the bodies of their victims, sometimes wearing the skins like Buffalo Bill-approved serapes.

From this point, it’s all about the survivors banding together, figuring out the source of the mutation (if you think creepy Sydney is involved, give yourself a cookie), figuring out how to fight the enormous insects (some of which are at least twice as large as the humans) and making one, last, epic stand for the good of all humanity. Will Julia and Paul be able to survive the night? Most importantly: will they ever admit that they kinda dig each other?

For the most part, Stung is a pretty by-the-book creature feature with a few exceptions. For one thing, the tone tends towards the serious, despite the gonzo subject matter, unlike something like Cooties (2015) or Love in the Time of Monsters (2015). While I’m a big fan of horror-comedies, I actually really liked the serious side of Stung, although the film could (occasionally) take itself so seriously that it swerved over the line into campy and silly. That being said, the film’s goofier, more overtly comedic moments end up sticking out like a sore thumb, splitting the film’s focus and leading to a very unsure tone. I wouldn’t actually call Stung a horror-comedy so much as I would describe it as a serious horror film with several misguided comedic moments: that’s a pretty big difference, obviously.

Another aspect of Stung that tends to set it apart from similar films is the genuinely exceptional effects work. In fact, short one truly terrible CGI shot of a flaming wasp in the film’s final reel, the effects work here is pretty stunning. The wasps look amazing, even in close-up (usually the kiss of death for creature effects), and the scenes where they burst from their victims are pretty damn gnarly: the aforementioned “skin suits” are a truly twisted, ingenious touch and add immeasurably to the film’s horror factor. There a real sense of physicality and weight to the creatures that you just don’t find in a lot of “giant bug” flicks: if nothing else, Stung is a minor masterclass in effectively using both practical and CGI effects in a low-budget film. Immense kudos to the effects team here.

The third aspect where Stung tends to set itself apart is, unfortunately, another negative one: the film has a raft of pacing issues, lurching from truly thrilling action sequences to long stretches where nothing much happens at all. This isn’t a case of being a slow-burn film, either: this is more like getting a car up to racing speed only to have the engine consistently sputter out and die. There are so many peaks and valleys in the film that it makes for a pretty jarring experience: it’s definitely like a roller-coaster, albeit with a much more negative connotation than that particular comparison usually elicits. Chalk this up to first-time director blues, however, since the thrilling moments are perfectly paced and executed: there just weren’t enough of them.

Ultimately, Stung is a thoroughly enjoyable creature feature with decent acting (Cook and O’Leary don’t have the best chemistry but they still work), an okay script (great scenario, iffy dialogue), amazing effects (both practical and CGI) and a set-up for a sequel that’s both awesome and intensely stupid (in the best way possible). If the film never comes close to scaling the heights of something like Mike Mendez’s Big Ass Spider (2013), well, that’s okay, too. There are enough decent touches here to indicate that Diez probably has some good films coming down the pike: for fans of giant bug films, this definitely isn’t a bad way to start.

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10/29/14 (Part Two): Now THAT’S a Spider, Man!

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31 Days of Halloween, Abbott and Costello, Alexis Kendra, Big Ass Spider!, cinema, Clare Kramer, exterminator, film reviews, films, friends, giant insects, giant spiders, great openings, Greg Grunberg, Gregory Gieras, horror, horror-comedies, King Kong, Lin Shaye, Lloyd Kaufman, Lombardo Boyar, Mike Mendez, military coverup, Movies, pest exterminator, Ray Wise, sci-fi, Where Is My Mind?

As a tinkling, piano-led cover of the Pixies iconic “Where Is My Mind?” plays on the soundtrack, we watch as Alex (Greg Grunberg), clad in exterminator’s overalls, strides in slow motion through absolute chaos: soldiers fire at something behind him, people run away screaming and buildings collapse into rubble everywhere. And then, we see it: a massive spider, as big as a house, sits atop a skyscraper like an arachnid King Kong. It strikes a helicopter out of the air with one giant foreleg, sending it flaming to the ground as the screen cuts to black. Text comes up on the screen: 12 hours earlier.

This is the first three minutes of Mike Mendez’s Big Ass Spider! (2013) and let me assure you: it is three absolutely glorious, nearly perfect minutes. If the rest of the film fails to completely live up to that decidedly high bar, well, that’s one of the prices paid for ambition. From the title on down, there’s nothing about BAS! that necessarily screams “must-see”: if anything, the film seems like it would be nothing more than a SyFy-esque romp with serviceable effects, some stupid laughs and lots of cheese. Quite the contrary, however, Mendez’s film has plenty of heart and is non-stop fun: it’s the furthest thing from perfect but it’s also utterly charming and, in the end, that’s always going to win me over.

Our hero, Alex, is a pest exterminator who’s ended up in the hospital after coming across the business-end of a brown recluse spider during a house call. He’s a perpetually nice guy but he’s also sort of a clumsy doofus: his attempts to flirt with a nurse (Alexis Kendra) are awkward, to say the least, and he always seems one misstep away from complete chaos. Alex gets called into action when the hospital administrator approaches him about an issue: “something” appears to be loose in the hospital and they want Alex to kill it, an offer he gladly takes up in order to wipe his exorbitant bill clean. When he learns that the creature appears to be a large spider, Alex feels he’s more than up to the task: “I become a spider to catch a spider.”

As it turns out, however, Alex doesn’t really know what he’s up against. You see, this is no abnormally large spider, as we come to see: this thing is obviously some sort of mutated monster, an acid-spraying, lightning-fast nightmare that uses the hospital’s ventilation system to move from victim to victim. Suspicions are confirmed when the military quickly shows up, led by no-nonsense Major Braxton C. Tanner (Ray Wise). Turns out that the spider in question was actually part of a government experiment that went awry (natch) and they’re now faced with a creature that will continue to grow, unchecked, until they can destroy it.

With the help of his faithful partner (and resident security guard) Jose (Lombardo Boyar), along with Lt. Karly Brant (Clare Kramer), a soldier who’s a terrible shot but seems to have a crush on the exterminator, Alex pursues the rapidly growing spider from the hospital, into the sewers and, finally, onto the very streets of the terrified metropolis. To destroy this dreadful abomination, Alex is gonna needs lots of help, some hardcore firepower…and more than a little luck.

Despite coming out of the gate strong (incredibly strong, to be fair), BAS! wasn’t the grand slam that I was hoping it would be, although it still ended up being a ton of fun. There’s so much about the film that really works that it’s easier to gloss over the elements that don’t, chief among them being the often tedious relationship between Alex and Jose. For the most part, Jose exists as a gentle Mexican stereotype, never mean-spirited, per se, but ridiculously clichéd, none the less. His constant banter gets really grating, after a while, as does the ham-fisted Abbott and Costello routine that Grunberg and Boyar effectively beat into the ground. Although I didn’t find their interaction to be as noisome by the film’s final third (they actually become a rather cute duo), there’s an awful lot of corn to wade through to get there. The film could also get a little silly, at times, and I noticed that the CGI tended to get dodgier the bigger the spider got: by the time it’s car-sized, we’re squarely in SyFy territory, effects-wise.

But these are all minor quibbles, ultimately, the kinds of issues that plague pretty much any B-movie. For the most part, BAS! hits all of its beats and manages to maintain a breezy, good-natured sense of humor that keeps things from ever getting overly serious…not that a film about a giant spider could ever be overly serious, mind you, but you get the point. Grunberg, most notable as one of the “heroes” on the bygone “Heroes” show, is pretty great as the lead here and ably carries the film: he’s a perfect combination of innocence and sass, never so smarmy as to be insufferable, yet steely enough to be believable. It’s also nice to see Wise play the straight guy, for a change: his take-charge Major is still recognizably Wise but it’s a much flintier version than we normally get. I also really like the ending, which gives the perfect set-up for a sequel (“What’s the biggest cockroach you’ve ever seen?”) without seeming too obvious.

If anything, Big Ass Spider! is a gleeful throwback to the era of good-natured, drive-in flicks, the kind of film that goes perfectly with a lukewarm sixpack of cheap beer, a carload of friends and a warm, summer night. It won’t reinvent the wheel, technically speaking, but it doesn’t really need to (or mean to), either. If the thought of a Volkswagon-sized spider rampaging through a city park and eating a pervy jogger played by Troma head Lloyd Kaufman puts a smile on your lips, this is absolutely the film for you. I might dislike real spiders with a fervor approaching religious zeal but I’m happy to hang out with this webcrawler any day of the week.

10/29/14 (Part One): Live By the Swatter, Die By the Stinger

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31 Days of Halloween, aliens, Brooke Nevin, Christopher Marquette, Deborah Geffner, E. Quincy Sloan, father-son relationships, flashbacks, giant bugs, giant insects, horror-comedies, human-spider hybrids, Infestation, Jim Cody Williams, Kyle Rankin, Linda Park, mutations, Ray Wise, reluctant hero, Wesley Thompson, writer-director, zombies

If there’s one thing that’s proven itself a time-tested, dependable trope in the sci-fi/horror world, it’s giant bugs attacking defenseless humans. It’s pretty much a no-brainer: most folks aren’t particularly fond of insects under the best of circumstances and the ones that are probably wouldn’t like them so much if they were the size of large horses. There’s something about bugs, in general, that’s almost alien: it’s no coincidence that so many filmmakers regularly use insectile elements in depictions of monsters and extraterrestrials.

Since the golden age of the giant bug movie in the ’50s, we’ve been treated to a pretty impressive menagerie of creepy crawly-focused films: audiences have thrilled as giant ants, spiders, wasps, cockroaches, scorpions, praying mantis, moths and ticks have all laid waste to the vestiges of human civilization. Science can’t help us…the military is defenseless…not much you can do about an “enemy” that outnumbers you a million to one, is there? To this long tradition of giant bug films, proudly add writer-director Kyle Rankin’s Infestation (2009), a snappy little horror-comedy that manages to overcome some rough patches and emerges as a fun choice for fans of the subgenre.

We begin “in the shit,” as it were, with an office building full of cocooned bodies and strange, beetle-like creatures roaming the halls, feeding on the captives. Our hero, Cooper (Christopher Marquette), has just fought his way out of his silken prison and has begun to free his co-workers, including Maureen (Deborah Geffner) and Jed (Jim Cody Williams). Via flashback, we learn that Cooper was actually sort of a lazy, do-nothing douchebag and that Maureen, his supervisor, had just fired him prior to the “event” that landed them all in their current predicament. That’s right, folks: we have ourselves another reluctant hero.

After freeing Maureen’s daughter, Sara (Brooke Nevin), Cooper leads the group, which now contains Leechee (Linda Park), Al (Wesley Thompson) and Al’s son, Hugo (E. Quincy Sloan), towards the presumed safety of his estranged survivalist father Ethan’s (Ray Wise) fortified bunker. All around them, the world seems to have gone to hell in a handbasket: giant wasp-things patrol the skies, swooping down to carry helpless victims away, while the beetle-creatures viciously attack anything they can hear, as they appear to be blind. To make matters worse, anyone who’s stung by one of the wasps becomes infected and gradually becomes a terrifying human-spider hybrid, adding a bit of a zombie element to proceedings.

Once at his father’s house, however, Cooper learns that Ethan isn’t particularly happy to see him. A power struggle ensues between father and son as both try to control the future of the group: Ethan wants to press on and find more survivors, while Cooper wants to plunge into the dark depths of the creatures’ nest and take on their queen, all in a desperate bid to safe humanity. Three guesses as to which path gets chosen and the first two, of course, don’t count.

For the most part, Infestation is lots of fun: the action is brisk and zany, the effects are actually really good (the human-spider hybrids are actually kind of amazing and made the 10-year-old boy in me super excited) and the cast is quite good. It’s always good to Ray Wise in anything and he certainly doesn’t disappoint here, turning in one of his trademark wise-ass/tough-guy roles but with enough paternal tenderness to sell his relationship with Cooper. Nevin holds her own as Sara, proving a gutsy, consistently interesting foil for Cooper. To be honest, only Marquette had to grow on me: for the first third of the film or so, I found Cooper to be nearly insufferable and I kept hoping that he’d get eaten and leave Sara as the defacto hero. No such luck, it turns out, although he did gradually reveal himself to be a more likeable character. A lot of this has to do with the writing, no doubt, but Marquette has a particular comic style that often reminded me of comedian Nick Swardson and could, in large doses, run rough-shod over the rest of the cast.

While the dialogue wasn’t always great and the film could, on occasion, be both clunky and inconsistent (the tone could swing wildly within the same scene, sometimes to the detriment of said scene), I really found myself drawn in by the energy and good-natured sense of fun. By the time everything wrapped-up with a gleefully gonzo homage to Aliens (1986), a set-up for an obvious sequel (Hugo looks off-screen, exclaims, and it cuts to credits) and a super-catchy Brit-poppy song over the end credits, I found myself quite fond of the film. While Infestation can, at times, have a bit of the feel of a Syfy film (albeit one of the better ones), it constantly strains against its limitations and is never less than entertaining. The biggest complement that I can pay the film is to say that I would gladly watch the (hopefully) inevitable sequel: if these are our new insect overlords, I’ll be happy to greet them with open arms.