Director: Just Philippot
Cast: Suliane Brahim , Sofian Khammes , Marie Narbonne , Raphaël Romand , Victor Bonnel , Vincent Deniard , Stéphan Castang , Guillaume Burstyn , Clément Bertani , Christian Bouillette
Plot: Virginie lives on a farm with her children Laura (15) and Gaston (7) and raises locusts as a high-protein crop. Life is hard: money worries and practical problems are piling up, tensions with her kids and neighbors are running high. But everything changes when she discovers the locusts have a taste for blood.
My Movie Review: The movie is a trip worth taking it focuses on a single mother breeds locusts as high-protein food, but has trouble getting them to reproduce until she finds have a sense of taste for blood that makes wanna cringe as the bugs takes over visceral as horrifying! The Swarm is disgustingly mind-blowing and absolute hoot to watch this is a French horror movie with brilliant execution and a thoughtful message that's slightly marred by stale horror movie tropes that moves you beyond expectation and somehow make room for new discovery! It's more of a slow-burn horror drama maybe the film is better for that, maybe it's not, but its subtlety and suggestiveness are refreshing as Philippot's approach is really straightforward! The movie has a good and interesting idea but the execution is kind of poor, some of the decisions didn't made a lot of sense but the metaphor is there to slay as you left awe on how's! The Swarm is a creepy crawly horror that gets under the skin biggest asset its cinematography. Whether it was illustrating how isolated Virginie ratcheting up the sense of ever-increasing dread as she scaled her farm up, knowing full well something like this could only end badly, or even just showing gnarly close-ups of the locusts themselves visuals were put to excellent use! So much so, in fact, that even with the film on mute I think the impact would have been much the same as it really did paint a very detailed picture-- striking you cannot ignore to look closer!
Critic Reviews: What Alfred Hitchcock did for birds the French director Just Philippot does for grasshoppers in this extravagantly eerie, rooted practical horror film. It's one of those examples where the message and the execution go hand-in-hand with appreciable results. The Swarm drags far too long, setting up its eventual ending, which compounds the film’s problems by delivering an ending that I can’t imagine anyone being satisfied. This is a French horror movie with brilliant execution and a thoughtful
message that's slightly marred by stale horror movie tropes and
predictability. Absurd and tense story seems almost believable as it combines social drama with horror. Can a horror movie be too classy for its own good? That's the question raised by Just Philippot's The Swarm. The bugs themselves are horrifying, but it's the sound that will stick with you, looking over your shoulder every time you hear insect start to buzz. Directs the hell out of the movie, parsing out the money shots and sticking primarily with skin-crawly practical FX for maximum horrific-dramatic effect. As creature features go, this one plays and finds its pulse-pounding payoff in grand style. An example of excellent special effects perfectly integrated into the story. It does his best to approach the material with a grounded sense of realism, but audiences will be aware early on that events can unfold in direction! Combining all social drama and horror, "The Swarm" is an excellent first film for Just Phillippot!!
