I have some issues with this movie, which I’ll get into in a bit, but this film is at least noteworthy for being another entry in the painfully small sub-genre of giant ant films. For the longest time we’ve only had two: Them! (1954) and Empire Of The Ants (1977). I love both of them dearly, and I can’t understand why we don’t have more. Well, now comes It Came From The Desert, a science fiction/action/comedy loosely based on the video game of the same name. I guess my first issue I have is it’s not a “pure” giant movie, and I’ve been thinking, I don’t think it’s even possible to get a “pure” giant ant movie in the 21st century, as in a serious movie about giant ants. It Came From The Desert has something in common with two other “big bug” movies: Spiders (2000) and Spiders 3D (2013). In both of those movies the spiders are the result of combining alien DNA with that of tarantulas. Same thing with It Came From The Desert, another shadowy branch of the military has decided to shove alien DNA into ants, and not just alien DNA, but also that of a tarantula and a fire ant. For the most part the giant ants look like ants, well, more like a species found in the tropics, but with the added spider DNA they have a tendency to capture prey, web them up, and store them in a chamber for food for their soon to hatch young. I do miss the day of just enlarging the ants, but filmmakers these days have to have an extra “hook,” hence these “chimeras.” Though, I give them credit for at least making them look like ants, and being only spider-like in behavior.
Theirs is a nod to Them! A Dr. Renard (Mark Arnold) refers to the experiments as Project T.H.E.M. unfortunately, he never reveals what that acronym stands for. Also another nod comes in the form of the history of these giant ants. A meteor crashed into the New Mexican town of Lizard Breath in the 50s and mutated the ants into immense killers. Chicane Industries enters this picture and manages to take over and start their own experiments. At some point before our main characters come into the picture the ants got out and killed everyone in the New Mexico complex.
Teens Lukas (Alex Mills), Brian (Harry Lister Smith) and Lisa (Vanessa Grasse) are the three main characters. Lukas is Brian’s older brother and Lisa is the chick Brian has a crush on but is reticent to reveal his feelings to, believing she may have a thing for Lukas, which he’ll find out is totally wrong. Both brothers are dirt bikers, and this day they’re heading off into the desert for a party. We do have some human “villains,” brothers Tim (Callum McGowan) and Craig (Andrew Horton), but they’re more . . . I don’t know, on a scale of 1-10 on the Villain Scale, they come in at a 1. They’re just jealous of Lukas because he’s a better dirt biker, and both sets of brothers become friends in the end anyway.
The two lead teens reminded me of two other actors, strangely enough. Harry Lister Smith reminded me of a young Dennis Christopher (Alien Predators, Necromomicon, Monsters episode, “Hostile Takeover”), and Alex Mills reminded me of Eric Thal (Down, The Puppet Masters). If you had told me they were the sons of those two actors I would believe it.
While the party is going Brian separates himself from it, forcing Lukas to look for him, this is when they spot a tunnel in the mountain and think that would be a great place to ride their bikes into, so they go check it out and stumble upon the abandoned facility where giant ants are still roaming.
Once the ants escape the carnage begins, though it’s soft R-rated carnage because let’s face it a realistic movie about giant ants would be gory as all hell, since you’re basically dealing with a creatures with giant sheers sticking out of their faces, and, well, use your imagination on how that would look when they went after people. Starship Troopers (1997) is a good example of this kind of carnage, now that I think about it. In fact Empire Of The Ants, despite its PG rating kind of mined this territory too, showing us, or partially showing us, I should say, how bloody grim it would be being attacked by a giant ant.
The inclusion of comedy is probably what really tanked this movie for me. I’m not opposed to comedy in horror or semi-horror flicks as long as the comedy isn’t coming from the monsters. For the most part it’s not in this film, but there are two scenes that made me groan: the one where there are subtitles for a scene with two ants, so we can see what they’re saying to each other, and one where a giant ant invades the party, grabs a keg and downs the beer. You see these ants need alcohol to fuel their spawning. After it burps it kills a kid by tossing the keg at his head.
I also found Lukas’ character to be borderline annoying. Not totally, but he comes close, a few times he just jokes around way too much.
What I did like about the movie was the visuals, the cinematography, the color palette (it’s quite a colorful movie), and the CGI ants. I thought they were created, executed and integrated well into the movie. And based on these high points alone, even though I’m giving this somewhat of a thumbs down (not a hard thumbs down, mind you) the visuals on this flick alone may get me to revisit it in the future.
Before I end this review there’s one more giant ant poised to come out, it’s called, Dead Ant, and the trailer, unfortunately, feels like a comedy. But I will undoubtedly give it a look when it finally hits disc.
It Came From The Desert is out now here in the U.S. from The Orchard as a DVD only! Order it on Amazon! Unfortunately, the U.S. never got a blu-ray, there’s only Canada and Germany that got blues, so I recommend hitting up either Amazon Canada or Raven Banner themselves for it. Overseas hit up Amazon Germany for that particular blue. Though I can’t tell if the German blu comes with the extra features or not.
2018 THE ORCHARD (US) DVD
2018 RAVEN BANNER (CANADIAN) BLU-RAY
Video/Audio/Subtitles (DVD): 2.35:1 widescreen (anamorphic)—5.1 English Dolby Digital (surround), 2.0 English Dolby Digital (stereo)—No subs
Video/Audio/Subtitles (Blu): 1080p 2.35:1 high definition widescreen—5.1 English DTS-HD Master Audio, 5.1English: Dolby Digital—English SDH subs only
Obviously, I recommend the blu-ray version, for it provides a much better transfer.
Extras Included (DVD) . . .
- Trailer
Extras Included (Blu) . . .
- Featurette – Desert Origins (22:22)
- Interview – Director To Creator (56:34)
- VFX Breakdown (6:15)
- 360 Degree Ant View (:52)
- Trailer (2:03)
- War Of The Dead Trailer (2:10)
- Other Raven Banner Trailers (Lowlife, The Lodgers, Victor Crowley)
I just came across an interview with Director Marko Mäkilaakso on Raven Banner’s site where he explains, “Like the It Came From the Desert game was spoofing those and other 1950s monster movies, my movie is also spoofing the modern creature feature craze of SYFY movies.” Okay, well, now that explains the tone I was getting turned off by. And, yes, I’m going to agree with him on this. His movie does feel like a spoof of a lot of those shitty monster movies SyFy tends to make, the only difference being I found his film to be better than some of them, especially in the CGI department. As I said I may end up re-visiting this in the future, and when I do I’m going to do it with the blu-ray. I’m eager to see the extras, extras tend to make me like a movie better when I see how it was made. So, when that happens I’ll come back here and add an update.
UPDATE 12/28/20: Well, here I am, two years later, actually providing an update. I wasn’t sure this would happen, but in the last six months the movie was popping up in my mind, so I decided to add it to my collection, and, yes, it has grown on me. I like it more now than when I first reviewed it.
PHYSICAL MEDIA LIVES AT . . . 