They Crawl |
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 • USA • 2001 • 93m •   • Directed by: John Allardice. • Starring: Daniel Cosgrove, Tamara Davies, Dennis Boutsikaris, Ken Lerner, Billy Keane, Scott Rinker, Brandon Karrer, Bennet Guillory, Tim Thomerson, Tone Loc, Mickey Rourke, Grace Zabriskie, Andi Eystad. • Music by: Neal Acree.      After a fiery wreck involving half the city and a runaway bus, the coroner discovers that the bus driver's body has no internal organs, which is eerily similar to the body of a dead computer geek they also recently discovered. Former Special Forces dude Ted Gage, the brother of the computer hacker, begins an investigation with the lovely, skeptical detective Gina O'Bannon . What they find is that a bizarre cult headed by Tiny Frakes is responsible for unleashing a mutant horde of cockroaches on the city.
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Directed by John Allerdice They Crawl is one crap sci-fi horror film that wasted 90 odd minutes of my life. The script by Curtis Joseph & David Mason is so slow it's untrue, I was bored rigid throughout. The X-Files style governmentmilitary conspiracy side of things is as dull as it sounds while the horror elements are severely lacking. Until the final 10 or so minutes there are precisely three cockroach attacks, that's three attacks in 80 minutes & one of those is right at the start. The rest of the excruciating running time is devoted to O'Bannon & Ted's investigations as they uncover the conspiracy, unfortunately They Crawl is one of those films where we, the audience that is, know that there are killer cockroaches scuttling around & it takes the main character's virtually the entire film to catch up & it becomes an absolute snooze fest waiting. It was never explained to my satisfaction how the cockroaches were controlled, something about the correct frequency is mentioned vaguely but it's never really discussed & the equipment needed never shown. Another thing I'm not happy about is the use of footage from other films, during the opening sequence a bus driver is attacked & he swerves all over the place hitting other cars & it's painfully obvious that this footage came from the Swarzenegger action film Red Heat (1988) & I kept saying to myself why the hell didn't the bus driver just pull over & stop? Because they couldn't have stolen that footage then that's why! The bit when Brians flat explodes is taken from Rush Hour (1998) & there's a bit when a house explodes lifted from another Swarzenegger film, Last Action Hero (1993). To add insult to injury these scenes are the best in the entire film! The plot is a mess, it's dull, repetitive, boring & you can see the so-called twist ending coming a mile off.
Director Allerdice does an OK job, the film is alright to look at & has a few neat special effects. The huge cockroach made out of ordinary cockroaches at the end looks pretty good but this is far too little far too late. There is no atmosphere to it, there's definitely no scares, shocks or surprises & the horror is secondary to the dull conspiracy. Forget about any blood or gore as there isn't any, there are a couple of wounds, a cockroach comes out of someones ear & that's it. Although if you are scared of cockroaches then They Crawl may make you feel a bit uneasy.
They Crawl must have had a low budget, all the decent bits are stolen from other infinitely better films. As it is it's competent at least but that's about the best thing I can say about it. The acting sucks, what on Earth is Mickey Rourke doing in crap like this?
They Crawl is one of the worst killer bug films I've ever seen, the bugs seem to be almost totally ignored in favour of dull melodramatics & X-Files style conspiracies that went out of fashion a long time ago, unfortunately no one told the hacks who made this. There is absolutely nothing by which I could recommend this total waste of celluloid, for insomniacs & masochists only.
Review by Paul Andrews from the Internet Movie Database.
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