THE SWARM : Tuesday 10th August 2021.

With Greater Sydney still in COVID lockdown, and as a result all cinema's closed until August 28th at least now, I've been reviewing over the last few weeks some the latest feature films released recently onto Netflix. One such film that I watched from the comfort of my own sofa at home this week is the French fantasy horror drama film 'THE SWARM' ('La Nuee'). Directed by Just Philippot in his feature film making debut it was selected for the International Critics' Week at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival which was subsequently canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Netflix bought the worldwide distribution rights to the film except for China, Spain and France and released it on 6th August to generally favourable Reviews.

Virginie Hebrard (Suliane Brahim), is a single mother and widow, living in rural France with her two children, Laura (Marie Narbonne) and Gaston (Raphael Romand). She has been unsuccessfully raising locusts for protein, but is struggling to make and honest living from her endeavours because the locusts are not reproducing at a large enough volume. Her neighbour and local vineyard owner and wine maker Karim (Sofian Khammes) tells her to give them more grass and more water, but this effort proves fruitless too. Gaston keeps a small number of pet locusts in a glass case in his bedroom, and one day he discovers that the locusts seem interested in human flesh and blood after one them feeds on a wart on his finger tip. 

Virginie becomes increasingly frustrated by the fact that nobody seems willing to pay good money for the locusts, or only buy from her out of pity when Karim asks them with him heavily subsidising the purchase price. Following one such transaction, Virginie angrily enters the locust enclosure and out of frustration trashes the nests, only to slip and be knocked out by a falling shelf. When she comes round sometime later she discovers the locusts eating from an open wound on her arm that she sustained when she fell. She quickly flees the enclosure. That night, the locusts become more active. Virginie notices this change in their behaviour and in a moment of desperation, she goes into the enclosure, unbandages her arm and inserts it through an opening in the plastic sheeting allowing the locusts to feed from her open wound. 

The locusts start to reproduce at a rapid rate, allowing Virginie to sell ever increasing amounts, however, she also needs to supply them with blood and flesh. Laura is growing increasingly frustrated by her mother's obsession with the locusts, to the point where Virginie has increased the size of her operation from one enclosure initially to five now. In a fit of rage, Laura tears open one of the enclosures, so allowing a swarm to escape. Gaston is sitting in a pick-up truck under a tree nearby with his goat Huguette tied loosely to the steering wheel and standing in the back. Attracted by the goat, the swarm attacks the truck and be the time they have left, Huguette is nowhere to be found.

Upon arriving back from a trip to the local town, Gaston cries out to Virginie that Huguette was taken by the locusts. Virginie discovers that Laura caused the tear in one of the enclosures and reprimands her, after which she locates Huguette in a nearby field, covered in locusts that are feeding on her. She can't bring herself to tell Gaston that she has found his goat and so drives him around while he cries out for Huguette. 

In time Virginie's mental and emotional condition begins deteriorating as she supplies the locusts with her own blood, and she begins to kill random animals to feed the locusts, including her neighbours dog which she feeds alive to the ravenous locusts and a calf she kills late at night. Gaston is given permission by his mother to attend a soccer camp he has been wanting to go to, however, Laura is the one who has to drop him off as Virginie has been up all night feeding the locusts and is at home sleeping off the fruits of another busy night. When Laura returns home from seeing Gaston off, she finds her mother's room open and the floor covered in bloodied clothing. She rushes to one of the enclosures alerted by the sound of whimpering, only to find her mother naked and willingly being fed upon by the locusts. Horrified, Laura contacts Karim via text and tells him to come over to her home because her mother is seriously unwell.

Karim convinces Virginie and Laura to go for dinner over to his house. Alone in the kitchen with Laura, she is unable to tell Karim what's wrong with Virginie because she overhears them whispering and intervenes in the conversation, but Laura does mention the locusts. Karim says that they shouldn't go back home, but the mother is adamant. In the meantime, the neighbour goes into one of the enclosures searching for his dog. Karim returns Virginie and Laura home. When he observes that the pair have gone inside their house, he begins to snoop around the enclosures, only to discover the body of the neighbour who had been looking for his dog. The old man had been killed by the locusts who by this time had enveloped his body and were feeding on his bloody remains. Karim is attacked by the locusts, but manages to escape. This prompts him to take out a tank of gasoline from his truck, dousing the enclosures and setting them ablaze, at which point Virginie comes rushing out and attempts, albeit unsuccessfully, to douse the flames with a fire extinguisher. Needless to say, swarms of locusts fly out of the burning enclosures and surround the house in which Karim and Laura have sought safe refuge. Virginie hears Laura screaming and runs into the house, finding the locusts have gained entry and Karim completely covered and being eaten by locusts. Laura escapes from the house and runs into the forest, with Virginie giving chase.

Laura is hunted down by the swarm and hides under an upturned row boat on a lake. The swarm cover the boat, the weight of them forcing it down into the water and starting to drown Laura. Virginie sees this and slices open her palms with a pocket knife, covering her face with blood and signalling the swarm towards her. The swarm turn their collective attention on Virginie, letting Laura be. When Laura realises what has happened, she swims out from underneath the boat but there is no sign of her mother. Fearing the worst she frantically splashes around in the water trying to locate her, when Virginie suddenly bobs up. Reaching her mother Laura lifts her into her arms and the pair embrace as what's left of the now depleted swarm fly off above them.

'The Swarm' is not a bad film but it's also not that great. The only truly unsettling scene I found in the whole film is when Virginie is carrying the very much alive little dog into the locust enclosure and feeds it to them blood thirsty grasshopper types. The sound of that poor little pooch being eaten alive well and truly pulled at my heart strings. Nonetheless, all the other tropes in this creature feature are fairly predictable, but what saves the film is the mechanical and digital effects, and the four central performances which certainly elevates it above the 1978 offering of the same name which held an all star cast headed up by Michael Caine and which ranks as one of the worst films of all time. If you're a lover of bug movies like this one, you'll get a kick out of 'The Swarm' whilst possibly enjoying the underlying social commentary about farmers doing it tough, a single parent raising two children, alternate protein rich food and teenage angst all wrapped up in a desperate mother's obsession, heartache and desperation to provide for her children and be successful. The ending when it comes feels rushed and there is certainly room for a follow on film here as several hundred of them pesky blood sucking flesh chomping grasshoppers are seen fluttering away at the end to wreak havoc someplace else no doubt. 

'The Swarm' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-