THEY CRAWL

Currently watching this on Zone Horror.

It's a police procedural where the culprits are killer cockroaches. It's got another 40 minutes to wow me but I'm enjoying it so far. A couple of peculiar things first:

When the film started, I thought "ahh looks like it's from 1989" but after about ten minutes, I re-evaluated and thought "nope, 1991". Then a character used the internet, so I thought "might be a bit later" THEN some cheapo CGI bugs turn up so I thought "aahhh MUST BE 1994, surely no later". I also thought this because there's an actor who falls firmly into the 'hey I know him!' camp, who is familiar from 90's movies. THEN Mickey Rourke turns up, looking older than he did in '94...

I quickly checked online and it's actually from 2001! I don't think I've ever seen such a mid-90's film before, that isn't from the mid-90's. And it has a kid with a computer array that involves a hammock that just screams 1990's!!!!!!!!! in it.

Also, a house explodes. And when it did, I thought "this must be from the 90's because that reminds me of the house explosion from Last Action Hero". But it was! They used the same footage! Another quick check reveals that this film also uses footage from Chain Reaction and Rush Hour, but I haven't seen those films in a while so I don't know which bits. There is a bus crash at the beginning, that seemed quite ambitious compared to everything that followed, so maybe that's from one of those films.

Anyway. The majority of the characters are pretty well done - I particuarly like the sweet kid sister to the brooding lead chap, andnot just because she's cute. The slightly bitch-faced female cop is also well-presented. Her arrogant twat of a partner is just screaming to get covered in ropey-looking bugs, so I've got my fingers crossed for that. Ah, a good guy's just got knocked out and woken up in a room filled with rustling crisp packets - I mean, cockroaches. I can't wait to see if the budget stretches to showing him getting eaten.

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Right. So, first of all, this turned out to be one of those deplorable films in which scenes contained within the trailer don't appear in the film itself. I don't think I've been so disappointed in this respect since watching Accion Mutante.

You'd think, a film like They Crawl, which uses footage from other films, would try to make the most of what original footage they had. But nope. They couldn't be bothered. On this note, I'm pretty sure the warehouse explosion at the end of this film is from Chain Reaction. A theory compounded by the following scene, in which burning rubble is shown from the point of view of the ruined building ie the camera's positioned where the building used to be, with a scattering of flaming rubble, so we don't figure out that this film didn't actually have the budget to blow up a building.

Ah the budget. As already mentioned, there are a bunch of CGI cockroaches shown at intermittent intervals. Not that scary. But do you know what is? A giant cockroach made out of all the smaller ones! The very fact this film has this happen should soot it right to the top of my 'ace' list, but the monster looks shit. Really shit. I've said it before and I'll say it again: CGI is largely shit. Give me practical effects any day of the week!

Poor show, They Crawl.