Dead Ant Review

Review of Dead Ant (2017) by screenqueeen: 👎 1.5/5

the thirteenth night in the lonesome hooptober day 37 film 33 cats: 0

87/100

what a treat to see Michael Horse in something that might finally not use tribal heritage as a crutch or plot point.. oh. nevermind i guess. what a weird cast to start with, first of all. the band dynamics are the strongest thing in the movie and even then it doesn't seem to realize that, instead wandering off to rope in two characters created & cast solely under the influence of (and in service to) the male gaze, like a charm for masculinity to rest on in moments of insecurity or at the least as objets d'art to embellish what has already been established between band mates and their relative distillment of personality.

once it gears down for the creature feature portions the film has a good idea of what it can do but falls short of the desire to actually explore that. and then it flat-out dives into chintzy cost-saving (maybe??) effects with superimposed/cgi fire effects and the worst offender, blood. you lose quite a bit of credit when your movie puts in computer generated blood effects. i was enjoying this up until Art bites it and knew what i would be in for the second Sydney Sweeney showed up, that bitch does not work for me. can Tom Arnold ever be in something without being so annoyingly loudspoken about anything? can he even do subtle at all? at least i did end up enjoying the music this band plays in the film while still being relatively bummed they took a legitimately good band name away from some noise/goth outfit with Sonic Grave. there was one nice clever moment that i appreciated (Firecracker looks up at tons of giant ants cresting a hill and says "that's them"* and i chuckled) but this didn't do it for me. Jake Busey looks good in eyeliner though.

*if you want a better monster ant flick you should just go watch THEM