Insectula! Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		1.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Insectula! Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 20, 2022

Insectula is one of those Z-grade Horror/Sci-Fi films that looks like it was made for about $46. Try as it might to fall into the supremely cheesy category with an ample sprinkling of cleavage and gore mixed into the pot in order to delight audiences looking for the next master work in the "so bad it's good" category, the film just can't make that leap from from "bad" to "good bad." Writer/Director Michael Peterson throws an incoherent plot and oddball characters onto the screen that, mixed with confused technical structure and editing only leaves the audience to wonder what external influences were at play when the picture was made.

A monster from another world -- one entirely inhabited by monsters -- has made its way to Earth. It lands in the Great Lakes vicinity of North America and immediately kills a young woman named Hanna (Hanna Hudson). Hanna and EPA agent Del (Pasquale Pila) had been an item until her severed head shows up, having been killed by the alien creature. Hanna's death sends Del into a tailspin. He mourns his beloved, refuses sex from other women, and vows revenge on the creature that killed his precious. Meanwhile, Scientists Brittany Sax (Arielle Cezanne) and Dr. Heinrich Johann Kempler (Harrison Matthews) perform autopsies on the mangled remains an determine the killer to be the creature from another world. Kempler hypothesizes that the creature -- which he calls "Insectula" -- will eventually dominate the world and eliminate human "parasites" from the planet. As Kempler maneuvers to allow the creature to perform its function, Del fights to stop it no matter the personal cost.

The first thing to stand out isn't even the movie...it's the curious Blu-ray case artwork that features a very cool and retro 50's look about it with the monster front and center, the title scrawled along the front in creepy, edgy lettering (complete with an exclamation mark at the end), and the World War II-era soldiers and tanks filling the bottom of the panel. Then, at the top are modern-day Apache attack helicopters for whatever reason. Of course, the movie takes place in modern times, not the 40s or 50s, and there's not a lot of military action in the movie, anyway, and certainly not to the scale suggested by the cover. So many of these cheap movies lean on some level of false advertising (The Asylum was a master at this type of marketing when it was releasing on Blu-ray) so be aware that this is not a modern retro take on the classic 50s Sci-Fi "irradiated bug" phenomenon, nor is is something like Battle: Los Angeles in terms of army vs alien action.

The big problem is really the big picture beyond little piddly, nit-picking things like cover art half-truths. The film is just a mess and it's as structurally ugly as the gore is ugly (gore hounds are going to be in for a squirming treat with this one; there's almost everything imaginable to some level of effective absurdity that over emphasizes practical nastiness, substituting realism for piles of sinewy, blood colored goop), and cheesy digital helps. Beyond some low-grade stuff in the opening moments, the monster isn't seen fully until the 53-minute mark, and by then it's too late to really care. The various narrative and structural hardships are too much to overcome. The go-nowhere characterization and truly awful acting do nothing to lift the borderline incomprehensible script off the ground. The gore is just nasty, the effects are just cheesy, and the whole thing is just bad. Maybe if the audience squints long enough and turns the brain on for an extended period of its runtime someone might find some social commentary worked in, but this is just a slog of a movie that isn't bad because it has not budget; it's just bad because it's, well, just bad.

Insectula! Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Insectula! ships on a burned BD-R disc (and it took my Panasonic DP-UB9000 a good minute of churning to load it), but it really doesn't matter. With zero budget and a micro studio behind it, it's not much of a surprise to discover that the Blu-ray proper looks as terrible as the movie. It's not clear if this film was made to look like an older movie. It's not that it suffers from worn elements but there's a certain feel of antiquity about it with sporadically faded colors, flat blacks, poor detail, and a general feel of it being run down and murky. Compression artifacts abound; one cannot look at the movie for even a second and not find some degree of chunky, blocky backgrounding. Banding is a frequent guest as well. Add in the poor-quality textures and flat colors there are no real praises to sing. It's watchable, and it's clear enough to show off all of the gore for all it's worth as well as reveal the obvious VFX limitations. "Expect the expected" is the big story here: with a movie this bad and this low budget usually comes a lousy looking Blu-ray and that is what has happened here.

Insectula! Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Insectula! creeps onto Blu-ray with an LPCM 2.0 uncompressed soundtrack. Unlike the video, the presentation is generally acceptable and plays lager than its two channel limits, and larger than its meager origins would suggest. It is far from perfect -- there's an occasionally muddled and mushy sound to some of the elements, including dialogue, but by-and-large the track plays well. It is fairly full and rich. It is very wide along the front with enough clarity, volume, and stretch to almost fool the listener into believing that, at times, there is some surround content (and subwoofer output, for that matter; this one is not lacking a lower end posture even without a dedicated subwoofer channel) at work. Clarity is not really lacking but it's not at peak efficiency, either, never delivering lifelike audio cues, whatever that would mean in a movie about an oversized mosquito from another world. But basic sound cues are fine, as is general track stamina. Dialogue, though as noted is at times flawed, mostly hits the mark with audibly clear cues and naturally imaged front-center placement.

Insectula! Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Insectula contains no supplemental content. The main menu screen only offers options for "Play Movie," "Chapters," and "Subtitles." No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

Insectula! Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Audiences with exactly the right expectations -- squeamishly cheap gore, ample cleavage, dollar store CGI, awful acting, and poor technical craftsmanship -- might be able to talk themselves into the idea that the movie is somehow worth watching, but...it's not. It's just a "so bad it really is just bad" sort of movie that's going to find very limited appeal, even amongst the circle of bad movie aficionados. This featureless Blu-ray includes poor video and passable audio. Skip it.