Reel Advice from the Video Store Guy

Infested: Invasion of the Killer Bugs

DVD

1/2

Written / Directed

Josh Logan

Zach Galligan .... Warren

Lisa Ann Hadley .... Ellen

Daniel Jenkins .... Steven

Amy Jo Johnson .... Jesse

Nahanni Johnstone .... Mindy

Robert Duncan McNeill .... Eric

Jack Mulcahy .... Bob

David Packer .... Elliot

Camilla Overbye Roos .... Robin

Tuc Watkins .... Carl

Mark Margolis .... Father Morning

R

84 mins

Most video fans are aware that the stuff released straight to video is usually sub-par. Production budgets are low, scripts are second-rate, acting is more wooden than a lumberyard... you know the story.

Infested raises the bar for sheer awful by being a straight to video release from a MAJOR STUDIO. That's right, this particular piece of awful is brought to you by the, and I hesitate to say good, people at Columbia Tristar.

We start this cinematic train wreck with a funeral. Great place to start, that. We also get a little high school reunion in the making, as the deceased's, a fellow named Steven, friends have some conversations amongst themselves. And these people are really deep, too. There's an actor, and several businessmen, and assorted wives, all talking about themselves. If these people were any more shallow they'd be grasslands.

Next, we get graveside services delivered by a priest so new-age he makes Shirley MacClain look like Cotton Mather.

Then the shallow ones begin questioning themselves, wondering if they've sold out their youthful ideals for the sake of profit. But this doesn't last any too long before they engage in discussion that brings things right back up to the level of shallowness that we've come to expect from this group of truly pointless yuppies for lack of a better word. Yoga, feng shui, and the CIA dealing crack. This is the body of their discussion. And then someone fires up the music of their youth on the ORIGINAL VINYL no less and that takes care of the next five, ten minutes.

Am I alone in thinking most people will be glad to see the bugs come and eat these people just so we can get some debris out of the gene pool?
[BB]
And then, finally, the bugs make their first appearance, biting one character's neck. I know, innocent enough, and the bug is smashed on contact, but then the bite victim throws the corpse on the ground.

And it bursts into flame.

How many bugs you ever see burst into flame when smashed? You can tell, these particular little pests are pests of a different breed.

Not only do these pests leave behind incendiary corpses, they also have--get this--MIND CONTROL POWERS.

The joke is, I'm not kidding. These bugs actually get into live human beings, usually via the mouth, and take over their minds. They don't seem to care when their host bodies' necks are broken, either.

In a surprise move, the script switches gears rapidly and delightfully CLEANLY from shallow yuppie party to harrowing survival horror. I have a soft spot for survival horror, and Infested sets it up well. The mind-controlled corpses disable the cars outside, leaving our remaining shallow yuppies with a serious problem--how to survive without being killed and / or taken over by swarms of bugs?

A critical advantage appears mere moments later as a swarm of bugs attacks one of the last living houseguests. As they fly headlong into a shaft of sunlight, they all burst into tiny fireballs.

Seems our bugs have a serious light allergy, meaning when nightfall hits, there's going to be a serious problem. Which means our surviving yuppies have to move, and quick. A party of yuppie survivors, armed with homemade torches, goes forth to do battle and recover the cell phone from one of the disabled cars.

The action continues until just two of our yuppie survivors are left alive and untouched by the bugs. And, much to everyone's surprise, the bugs are vulnerable to Raid.

And eighties music. Apparently, those strange, soulful beats confuse the bugs like no tomorrow and render them inoperative.

Everybody with me so far? To recap, our devilbugs can be killed by the following:

1. Light

2. Raid

3. Smashing Them

4. Eighties Music

What's next? Pine needles? Pina colada mix? Certain kinds of yeast? How many weaknesses can these bugs HAVE?

For a movie that showed such promise as a survival horror movie not a half hour ago, it's definitely fallen apart.

And then, in the last great reason why this movie is truly, truly awful, Steven comes back from the dead, looking good as new. He's complaining about his friends and their shallowness, which is what most of US have been complaining about since the start of the movie. He also doesn't trust the government with these superbugs, and thus, he let them loose on the world.

The ending will be roughly what you expect.

There isn't much in the way of special features on the DVD--only a trailer gallery for "Infested", "Anaconda," which was actually released back in the depths of 1997, and the Columbia "Creature Features" line of horror titles. Look for also a dearth of subtitles. They actually included subtitles for seven languages, including Chinese and Thai.

Now here's where things get weird. Two characters might be recognizable to horror / sci-fi buffs out there. Zach Galligan, whom you will remember as Billy Peltzer from Gremlins, plays Warren. Better still, quasi-legendary sellout Amy Jo Johnson from the ORIGINAL Power Rangers cast (Kimberly the Pink Ranger) plays Steven's recently-bereaved girlfriend Jessie.

All in all, this will sum up exactly what I thought of Infested:

Billy Peltzer did not deserve this indignity. He does not deserve to be part of a movie that can't make up its mind about what moral it wants to project. He does not deserve to be part of a movie that starts slow, suddenly picks up speed, then decides it's actually getting GOOD so it had better introduce some hackneyed plot devices to tone things down a bit. He does not deserve to be part of a movie with a script that can't quite tell if it's a horror movie or Return to the Breakfast Club.

Kimmy the Pink Ranger, however, DOES.

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