by John Zenoni
‘Frogs’, ‘Day of the Animals’, ‘Grizzly’, ‘Food of the Gods’, and ‘Orca’ are just some of the 70’s films I remember that featured animals gone wild and terrorizing people. Looking back on them now I recall how ridiculous and non-scary they were. By the way, wasn’t there one that featured Joan Collins? Anyway, I can't believe I watched a modern version of this type of film but I did and believe it or not, ‘The Swarm’ is actually quite good! In fact, it's not just good but it's actually very creepy!
The film is about a woman and her young kids who are still recovering from and haunted by the loss of their husband/father by suicide in the barn on their farm. In order to try and make ends meet, the mom is breeding and selling locusts as a high-protein food. While her son is fascinated by the locusts and even keeps some in his room in an aquarium, her daughter is completely embarrassed by it and is picked on by school classmates because of her mom’s choice of career.
While she does make some money doing this, the locusts are not breeding fast enough to keep up with the demand of buyers. That is, until she accidentally finds a way to create a ‘super’ version of the locusts. Frustrated, upset and angry about how things are going, she tears into the tent that houses the locusts and while throwing things around, she accidentally trips and falls and gets a bad cut on her arm. When she awakens, she finds some of the locusts are on her arm feeding on her blood. Initially disgusted, she shoos them away and leaves. When she comes back in later, she finds the locusts are still on areas where her blood splattered and sees that they like it. They then began to get bigger and breeding more and more so she's able sell more quantities. This begins her spiral into a horrific way of breeding the locusts.
The thing that makes this film so good is the acting and the story. It doesn't go off on the deep end and show the swarm of locusts taking over towns or attacking cities. The focus of the film is actually on the mom and what she's willing to do to make a living for her family. This is not to say that there are not some creepy moments involving the locusts, as after all, they're central to he film. In fact, there is one scene that's absolutely one of the cruelest things I've seen in a long time in a film. My mouth dropped when I realized what the mom was going to do. Anyway, this is one film - while it has a not so great title - that I recommend as it definitely provides the creep factor.
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