The Hive (2008)

I was absentmindedly scrolling through YouTube on the TV the other day, and we all share the same subscription in our house so naturally the subscribed channels part is a veritable mish mash of all our individual interests: travel vlogs, retro games and wrestling... But it appears somebody that wasn't me has subscribed to a particular channel that, like some of the other channels I keep a tab on separately, also broadcast free full length movies with flimsy copyrights. The absolute bedrock of what makes FTW Week FTW Week. And the particular movie that first puckered my interest and got me noticing the subscription was this weeks movie pick: The Hive. A 2008 movie about killer ants. The YT thumb alone was enough to catch my eye: a woman in a white top visually screaming in pain as tiny ants crawl all over her. I can't, in good faith, pass up an opportunity to cover something like this when it presents itself. What kind of B-Movie buff would I be if I did something stupid like not watch this?! 

When an Island in "South East Asia" gets seized by an incredibly hostile and enormous colony of flesh eating ants, the reviled and controversial Thorax are drafted in to retake control of the island from the insect menace. Arriving on the island, the team lead by Len (Kai Weber) with his second in command; Bill (Tom Wopat) and Comms Controller Debs (Jessica Reavis) meet with the local militia who inform them that the ants seems to be acting far more tactically and intelligently than is to be expected and their numbers far outstrip any similar past invasions, particularly one that occurred a few years ago. Devising a plan of attack, Thorax launch their first assault on the invasion with seemingly normal success but as Len and Bill are out on the field they come across a nesting colony of over a billion insects. As the observe the ants forming a giant levitating pair of tentacles, a branch swarming with the insects falls on the pair from the trees above, and despite being protected by their suits one of the ants is able to chew it's way inside and crawls inside Bill's ear, straight to his nervous system... Visibly affected by what happened, Len brings Bill back to the camp for observation, and at a slightly somewhat premature celebration dinner and dance that evening, Bill is visibly detached from the rest of the festivities. However aforementioned festivities are prematurely brought to an end when word filters through to the army and to Thorax team that a swarm 3 times the size of the one the eradicated today has been spotted on the island. Fearing something is happening far beyond his control, Len drafts in an old friend, Associate Professor, and all round insect expert; Claire (Elizabeth Healey). As Len brings Claire up to speed with his observations and his theory that the ants are demonstrating complex intelligence, Claire reveals that a chemical Thorax is using to exterminate the insects is becoming part of the wider global ecosystem which I'm sure won't have any significance later on in this movie... Arriving back at the base camp, Len and Claire stumble into an ongoing operation to contain a huge swarm of insects advancing on the camp with several tentacle-like columns rising from the wave. Erecting a field to keep the swarm at bay for now, Len and Claire join the army in rescuing civilians from a village that has been surrounded by ants, it's only protection a barrier of water. As the evacuation begins, a swarm of insects ejects from a nearby nest causing Len and Claire to have to flee back to the boat, rescuing an orphan civilian on the way, as they are pursued by the ants, who's tentacles are now capable of manifesting themselves into strong and powerful enough columns to smash up wooden crates apparently... Meanwhile Bill, and Cortez (Mark Ramsey) make their way to an abandoned factory for reasons that aren't immediately clear and proceed to wander around pointing their gun at things whilst the music gets all jumpy, until a wave of ants crashes down on them, shattering Cortez's helmet and working their way inside eating him alive. Meanwhile columns of insects descend upon the base camp forcing Debs to flee and she has to be picked up by a passing army patrol. Meanwhile Len and Claire, and their newly adopted orphan daughter, Ying (Elizabeth Bodner), find their drifting boat suddenly pulled to shore by an ant tentacle and a giant wave of ants engulfing the entire coastline begins to part as they arrive inviting the trio further into the island. As they make their way further inland, shepherded by the ants, they catch glimpse of an ant colony forming a rudimentary computer matrix generating it's own bioelectricity, and as they are forced deeper into a cave the ants begin to communicate a message, by lighting up in shapes on the roof of the cave, that they want to take occupation of the entire island, before a ant tentacle wraps up Ying, taking her hostage, and further tentacles force Len and Claire away from the cave. On their way back, Claire opines that "foreign substance introduced to their nervous system" would be enough to cause the ants to develop superiority like they have done, very much pointing the finger and Len and Thorax, but as they make their way back to shore, the pair draw closer and rekindle their prior romance. Arriving back at a new makeshift basecamp, Len and Claire discover Cortez is dead and when they deliver their findings and opinions on the ants new found intelligence, the army are at first reluctant to believe them and then reluctant to even entertain the idea that they have to negotiate with ants... preferring instead to "nuke them." But they do give Len and Claire at least 24 hours to come up with a more sensible solution. As Claire and Debs get all sciency to try and uncover more detail on the ants behaviour, Bill becomes increasingly more unstable with the ant inside his brain wreaking havoc on his nervous system much to the concern of Claire. The following morning, planning to return to the cave with just Claire, Bill talks Len into taking him with him and when they arrive at the cave, after being shepherded once again to the main chamber Len begins to negotiate with the ants as to ownership of the island. But as Bill continues to be driven to distraction by the ant inside his brain he reveals he has a suicide bomb strapped to his chest and plans to blow the entire island to tiny chunks. This only serves to anger the colony who proceed to imprison Len, Claire and Ying before turning their tentacles on Bill and attacking him. Immerging from the depths of the cave, the manifestation of a giant ant, formed by tiny ants appears, stomping into the mouth of the cave and just as it appears it's going to attack the others, Claire throws a vial of pheromone from a different ant species directly at it, causing it to disperse and fall apart. Making their way to the exit, Len is just about to go back to rescue Bill, when a severely injured Bill returns from the cave, now free from the control of the ant in his brain seemingly, but when the ant manifestation appears again, Bill faces it and distracts it just long enough for the bomb on his chest to detonate, killing all the little insects and himself in the process. Somehow surviving the nuclear blast despite standing only feet away... Len, Claire and Ying observe as the disembodied white light of a alien creature, that was presumably the thing making the ants act the way they did, flee from the cave and into the sky before exploding...

Well, ironically for a movie about killer flesh eating ants, somehow this movie managed to keep something of a pretty steady balance! I don't know whether to be pleasantly surprised, or disappointed. I mean it wasn't without it's slightly cheesy moments and it's totally unrealistic moments and boy they sure were some incredibly fast moving insects... but it didn't go completely balls out with it's wackiness and I don't know if that might have been better actually, it would have been more amusing yes, but in it's seriousness it lost some of it's appeal, but then if it had gone completely over-the-top, unless done carefully it could have just fallen apart into a stupid sloppy mess, so... I don't know... but it wasn't quite as zany as I expected it was going to be going in.

There was also a good degree of low production values on display. There were quite a few scenes where the sound production wasn't quite good enough and it got a bit of a struggle to hear the dialogue over the "background" music and a few occasions where the ruffling of clothing interrupted with the audio, amateur stuff but it was only in a couple of scenes. I also clocked a scene where the lettering on the helmets of the Thorax team was mirrored, suggesting the shot had been taken and then flipped in post prod, but somebody had forgotten to touch up on the lettering! Or it was too expensive to do that so they didn't bother? That being said, despite the low production values I feel overall that a pretty decent job was done otherwise so it didn't necessarily hamper the movie too much.

The cinematography though was pretty decent and it's clear some actual thought and planning went in to how the movie was going to be shot. They did overuse this one trope though that really bugged me and that was that there was an abundance of shots filmed incredibly close the actors faces, to the point where it was almost eyes and lips, sometimes even less than that! It did give you more a feeling of being incredibly intimate with the characters onscreen but I felt it was shot and deployed during scenes that didn't even really need it and they used it alot.

So far as the acting is concerned, I felt like everything was done pretty competently here, there was the odd moment where some of the characters brushed slightly on overacting. Tom Wopat though did a good job of walking a very thin tightrope between portraying his characters mental breakdown and not completely hamming it up with the overacting. It was a difficult role to fill, but I feel he mostly did a good job and could have collapsed into a totally cheesy, cringeworthy portrayal at any point but he balanced it well in my opinion and all round the acting from the main stars of the movie was pretty decent.

Soundtrack-wise though, everything was very basic and vanilla. And although the music choices did enough to match the suitability of the scene they were a glarring admission of the movies low budget. Special effects wise though was the absolute contrary, and it looks like some serious investment was put in to make the ant tentacles look believable enough. It wasn't 'outstanding' or anything like that, but it certainly looked impressive enough and I've seen much, much worse in low budget movies before now. Some obvious attention was put into making sure they looked convincing and not just silly.

A mixed bag of compliments and criticisms so far, but for me ultimately whilst this movie was enjoyable and inoffensive enough, it did deploy a lot of the same monster movie tropes that you will find in literally anything else. A hostile invasion, a sciency sub-plot and then the subsequent showdown, it was a path well trodden and the movie didn't colour outside of the lines. Whilst I did appreciate the concept of presenting a more highly evolved portrayal of ants becoming a dominant species, it was really about the only fresh part of the movie that I hadn't already seen in anything else before now. It felt like the whole movie worked through a checklist of 'bits they had to go on to next' throughout the whole thing, and short of having some kind of swerve at the end involving the military, it checked off his monster movie trope as it went along before reaching it's conclusion.

But despite the stale, predictive-ness of the storyline, despite the annoying cinematography choices and the very stock music, there was some decent acting here, and some decent special effects and a interesting enough concept that I was intrigued as to how the movie was going to develop. It didn't bring anything new to the table, granted, but there was nothing about it that was offensively bad, or by it's absence technically bad. There were moments it bordered on cheesy, and there was more than a fair share of completely unrealistic stuff going on, but it didn't really kill the movie for me, and whilst I cant say that it was good I can say that it wasn't bad... strong 2 out of 5.