Infestation   Starring: Chris Marquette, Brooke Nevin and Ray Wise Icon Home Entertainment RRP: £15.99 ICON10179 Certificate: 15 Available 07 September 2009

Cooper Flynn is an immature joker who shirks his professional responsibilities. He in the process of being dismissed by his unimpressed boss when everything changes. The next thing he knows he is waking up wrapped tightly in a cobweb-like substance. All of his office colleagues are similarly cocooned. An astonished Cooper is attached by a giant black bug, and soon discovers that everyone in the streets has been stored for future food. After waking a few individuals, including Sara, his former employer’s attractive daughter, Cooper ventures outside with the group. The plan is to track down their loved ones and find a safe haven, but the huge and violent bugs are everywhere, and when a crowd of angry flying beetle-like bugs swoops down and grabs Sara, Cooper determines to recover her safely - his normally non-existent courage and chivalry coming to the fore. But to tackle the queen bug he requires the help of his ex-military father. The father he hates. The father who is slowly turning into a human-bug hybrid...

Although the frequency with which Cooper makes silly and inappropriate remarks does reach a point where it begins to grate, Infestation as a whole is immense fun. The idea of the carefree protagonist wanting only to run away and find a safe place to hide up until his potential girlfriend is taken, rings naturally true to character. At which point his testosterone rises to the surface and the reluctant hero leads a rag-tag group towards the main nest for a confrontation with the queen.

Writer/director Kyle Rankin sensibly goes for the humorous element, with the monster horror, whilst initially looking somewhat over-the-top, being played down in favour of comic situations. In short, it’s not frightening, but you do find yourself laughing frequently at the absurdity of it all. The special effects are much better than you might expect (particularly the inter-species hybrids and flying bugs) without seeming to be in your face, and you even get a sense of the gravity of a wide-spread disaster, even though only a few streets and surrounding areas are actually seen.

Essentially, the name of the game here is fun, and that works admirably. After all, in the real world if somebody is pestered by a wasp or has a spider drop down on their head, our first thought is to laugh at their reaction. The format is very much in the vein of a 1950s B-movie such as Them, or a more contemporary variation like Eight-Legged Freaks and Slither. A very enjoyable popcorn movie. The only disappointment is a severe lack of extras, with only a Making of… documentary present.

8

Ty Power