Insectula (2015)

The poster looked cool

I love movies about giant bugs attacking the human race, which should be apparent to anyone reading the horror dude blog. I also love alien movies where they are up to nefarious plans to destroy the human race. When I heard that there was a movie about a giant alien bug that was invading Earth it shot to the top of my to watch list. That is how I ended up watching Insectula.

This one starts off with a commentator warning us of the horrors we are about to watch Plan 9 from Outer Space style. Then the action shifts to an alien world filled with all sorts of CG monsters and critters. One of them gets blown off the planet and finds its way to Earth, crashing into a lake. It makes its way to the closest female swimming along and kills her. This gets our hero involved because that she was the love of his life. He also works for the EPA so space monsters are sort of his thing. There is also an evil science guy, a good-looking woman, some hookers, and a coroner with a stutter. I’m sure the characters have names but I didn’t care.

Rule number one for making a parody of bad monster movie. Your version shouldn’t be bad! Insectula is a terrible attempt that doesn’t even have the charm of the movies it is making fun of. First the movie is way too long at a hundred and one minutes. After some interesting creature stuff the movie goes into a long stretch where we get introduced to far too many characters played by actors that have little to any screen presence or talent. You have the EPA guy, the evil scientist, and his pretty assistant as well as many others that serve only as fodder for a creature that takes way too long to reappear. While looking at my notes I noticed I kept writing, ‘where is the damn creature’ over and over again. That about sums it up. This is a project that could have used an editor. Hell, if you cut out the EPA agent and his mopey story this would have made the movie much shorter and tighter. Probably still not good but at least less miserable.

I did enjoy a couple of things about the movie. First is the character Lobo. He is a fat bald guy that is the evil scientist’s sidekick. He doesn’t show up until late in the story and gets very little screen time. The actor playing him nails his Tor Johnson impression and is very good. In a cast filled with annoying characters poorly brought to screen he stood out. I wish we had more of this character!

Loved the goofy effects

The other thing that was done well were the special effects. Don’t get me wrong it looks terrible, but it is supposed to. The fake severed head is my favorite effect and has that fun ‘60s look that is goofy as hell. The creature is mostly CGI, but we do get stingers and other latex bits swinging at the cast. Cheesy but perfect for the tone of the movie. There is also a bit in the Insectula’s nest where individual body parts are being kept alive so that they can make pus for the alien to eat. It was surprisingly disturbing, but is ruined because they had to make the scientist guy a bit pervy to I guess add some comedy where it wasn’t needed.

I wanted to like this movie but it is so boring that any enjoyment I could have possible had is killed. I’d recommend watching the kind of movie they were trying to spoof, like Invasion of the Saucer Men or Deadly Mantis, before sitting thru Insectula. Trust me you will have a much better time.

© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer