RG
Roberto Giacomelli
•In a small town in Mexico, a swarm of killer bees escapes from a crate containing cocaine destined for international trade. A journalist in search of a scoop becomes involved in the affair, and an entomologist present on the scene to find a remedy for the plague of mosquitoes will attempt to understand the origin of the bees. When a special section of the United States Army intervenes, the situation will worsen even further.
What is worse than an "eco vegenace" with killer bees? Probably nothing. Never has anything more useless and tedious managed to invade the animal genre like this soporific mini-filone dedicated to bees, wasps, locusts, and critters, a real calamity for the viewer. And despite this filone dragging heavily since the 70s with one flop after another, even today, after 30 years, the intrepid TV producers commission sterile films that vainly attempt to inspire some emotion in the entomophobic viewer.
"Killer Bees", "Swarmed - Genetic Crime", "Infested - The Swarm", "Flying Virus" are all low-budget productions that have suddenly exploded in the last 6-7 years to fill the shelves of video rental stores and that have in common the threat of killer bees or wasps. All these films have a famous ancestor, a blockbuster directed in 1978 by Irwin Allen that did not particularly well at the box office: "Swarm". The film subject of this review was marketed in Italy as the sequel to that famous movie with Michael Caine, but in reality, we are faced with an anonymous "Deadly Swarm" (distributed on home video with the title "Killer Swarm"), cousin of the same quality as any other eco vegeance with flying insects produced in recent years.
This "Deadly Swarm" (or "Swarm 2" or "Killer Swarm", as you like) was produced in 2003 under the direction of Paul Andresen, a complete unknown who has behind him a Van Halen music video and nothing more, and rests on a very thin screenplay that blends all the possible clichés of the beast movie/eco vegeance and stuffs them with such macroscopic errors that they leave even the most lobotomized viewer of "Lucignolo" open-mouthed. But let's go in order.
The clichés of "Deadly Swarm". The scientist protagonist who presents himself as an athletic beach stud will immediately have a special rapport with the beautiful journalist who wanders in search of scoops in an insignificant Mexican village; the annual festival that seems to be the only reason for the citizens' and "tourism" life of a deserted village, suddenly destined to be canceled due to the feral threat; the mayor who does not pay attention to the warnings of the expert who announces the catastrophe; the classic mass attack in which the mayor dies; the intervention of the army that, in addition to complicating the matter, seems to be directly implicated.
The errors of "Deadly Swarm". The wasps attack at night; the wasps attack a guy who has taken refuge in the water; a guy is taken to the autopsy room without anyone having even checked if he is dead (and indeed, the poor guy wakes up under the instruments).
Unlike many other similar products, the insects here are not genetically modified, but it is a particular breed of jungle wasps; the same wasps, as in many other similar products, are rendered with a fake CGI that makes them appear as visually horrific moving blobs on the film.
In short, "Deadly Swarm" is yet another boring, useless, and ugly TV eco vegeance that does not deserve the slightest attention. If you are really fans of this mini-filone dedicated to bees/wasps, then it is worth rewatching "Swarm" or "Bees - The Swarm That Kills".