Holy shit, do people still make posters like this? Maybe it was just a mid-to-late 90’s thing to have all of your characters get in a line, light part of their face, then show something dark and scary in the background. Only the 90’s! Am I right?! I saw this movie once, at a friend’s house, on VHS, probably after school. Guess what? I DON’T FUCKING REMEMBER ANY OF IT. I remembered the fact that it was a movie that existed, and was cocky enough to give it two stars on Netflix, like I remembered it, but after watching it, I realize I was an idiot. Charles S. Dutton was in it? It was directed by Guillermo del Toro?! THERE ARE BUGS?! You can imagine my delight when I saw this shit on Netflix Instant, especially since Rampaige wasn’t home and I knew I wouldn’t get in trouble for watching it. I hope she doesn’t read this!

Lucky Mira Sorvino for getting cast in the sequel to Joe’s Apartment!

I guess there are a bunch of bugs that are causing kids in New York City to get sick, so Mira Sorvino, the sexy entomologist, creates a bug that will kill the disease bugs. The catch is that these bugs have a fast metabolism, but there’s also only one male capable of reproducing. Tricky girl! Years later, Sorvino stumbles across one of the bugs she created, only to realize it was a juvenile. Somehow these shits are reproducing! Sorvino grabs her husband and heads into the tunnels to figure out what the fuck has been going on. Along with Charles S. Dutton and Josh Brolin, everyone goes into the tunnels to figure out what the fuck is going on. When they finally find the bugs, they see that they are human-sized. Whoa that’s a lot bigger than they thought they could grow! Turns out that the quick turnaround in generational adaptations has resulted in these freak bugs getting huge. We get to hear Sorvino talk about how different types of bugs are known to imitate their predators, and when she points out that the predators of the freak bugs are human, we quickly and easily get the justification of why they’re so goddamned huge. Don’t forget their weakness though, which is the fact that one male is cumming in all these lady bugs (not REALLY ladybugs) so they go in search of the male. Along the way, Sorvino loses her husband but replaces him with finding the male bug, who she tosses under a moving train, killing him. Once back to the surface, Mira looks longingly into the subway and thinks she catches a glimpse of a human bug freak, only to see her husband ascend the staircase moments later. Did she really see that bug? Are there more of them out there? All we can hope for is a sequel that will tell us the answer!

Goddamn, that Guillermo del Toro fucking loves bugs, doesn’t he?

I’d like to point out that this movie, just like Deep Rising, is a B-Movie plot that just happened to get funding from a larger studio. I think we can credit Guillermo del Toro for the look of the creatures and the overall dark look of the movie, but unfortunately, he has completely disowned this film. Apparently the Weinsteins, who paid for this movie to get made, continually showed up on set and told Guillermo what he needed to do. I guess they forced him to make enough changes that he doesn’t want his name on it, which sucks, because there was a lot of potential shown in this movie. I think what was so creepy was something that I didn’t really include in the plot, which was that before the gang went down into the subway, we keep seeing these strange humanoid people wearing long trench coats. It can be assumed that these are creepy might be people, or aliens, or monsters, they could be virtually anything. Once we realize how it’s kind of silly to think that the were bugs wearing human coats, we don’t see these characters anymore, so the mystery about them remains intact. I can’t really pinpoint why exactly, but I kept being reminded of the movie Dark City throughout watching this film. I think it was the darkly lit tone and the presence of mysterious trench coated characters that just gave you a sense of unease. Not to mention the fact that the original ending was a lot darker, which showed Mira Sorvino climbing out of the subway and into Grand Central Station, only to be confronted by hundreds of the humanoid bug creatures. I think that had Guillermo del Toro been allowed to do what he wanted, this film could have been a lot more memorable than it really is. It’s still much better than that Deep Rising bullshit.

Wolfman Moon Scale