While "Black Swarm" is a fairly generic movie in the genre with killer insects, and by that I mean following the manual of how to make such a movie. It is still an entertaining enough movie for what it turned out to be."Black Swarm" is about a deadly swarm of genetically altered wasps that threaten the lives of the inhabitants of a small town.Well, you know how it goes, hence there is no need to carve out the story in further detail. If you have seen any of the many other similar movies throughout the years then you know exactly what I am talking about.The effects in the movie were quite alright, which helped add to the overall enjoyment of the movie.What initially made me sit down to watch this movie was the fact that Robert Englund is in it. And, as usual, he did a good job and added his usual charms to the movie. Sarah Allen, Sebastien Roberts and Rebecca Windheim all also did good jobs with their roles.I am settlings on a mediocre five out of ten stars because it is an entertaining movie, but there just wasn't a particularly great sense of impending threat from the CGI animated wasps.

I really love the grade B stuff (and nothing beats the 50's and early '60s in that genre), but I found absolutely nothing of value or interest in Black Swarm. This one is grade F. I missed the last 20 minutes, because as it was building to the climax, I realized that it didn't have one. So many inconsistencies, irrational behavior of the characters, and pure stupidity that I can't even sum up just how horrible this straight to cable bomb really is. Let's start with the fact that dead bodies wake up and go missing from the morgue, and nobody seems to notice, including a scientist that had been shortly before, examining the body. Oh, it had plenty of clichés, such as the acute hearing and sense of smell of the old blind lady. WOW - that was some basement in that mobile home! Come on. There WAS a moral, though: Don't accept peaches from weird looking people who blow into dog whistles.

Decent "when insects attack" sci-fi horror has genetically modified weaponized killer wasps(created by scientist Robert Englund who "tweaked the wasp genome" turning their defensive mechanism of protecting the colony into an offense operating by instinct when attacking humans entering their bodies and turning them into zombie-like drones)on the rampage in a tiny town in Black Stone, New York as pest control exterminator Devin Hall(Sebastien Roberts), former flame deputy sheriff, Jane Kozik(Sarah Allen), and Jane's daughter Kelsey(Rebecca Windheim)trying to avoid being victims of the swarm. Englund's scientist Eli Giles is attempting to uncover a means to control the wasps from attacking everyone in sight, knowing that the black ops organization behind his experiment are out to get him. Entomologist Katherine Randell(Jayne Keitmeyer)comes to Black Stone seemingly to help figure out what would cause strange welts on a dead struggling musician(who kills the town's coroner at the command of the wasps), but her true motives are later revealed and it involves Eli's work. Kelsey eats from a peach injected with pheromones by Eli and this has the wasps considering her their queen! The special effects involving the wasps actually aren't as bad as I was expecting and BLACK SWARM has a rare hero role from Englund who bonds with Kelsey, even saving her from a hive. We see insects coming out of the ears of human victims and there are welts throughout their faces which signify the presence of the wasps inside them. You could do worse with a killer wasps movie than this. Like many other bio-weapon governmental genetic engineering plots, the wasps were created as a military tool against the enemy, of course the mad science instead gives birth to an out-of-control terror. Eli wants to correct his mistake of creating these wasps by working on a device to control them while those that hired him wish to kill the scientist.

I think the third review on this movie makes the most valid point. You need to be a fan of this type of movie to enjoy it. I'm not going to claim it's a great movie when it isn't, but it's a decent representative of a genre that hasn't seen a lot of traffic these days. Your mileage may vary. In my case it's the combination of two genres, zombie and bugs, that makes it more interesting for me. Thogh I found the premise for creating the zombies lacking given the relative sizes and complexities of the nervous systems involved, but hey! Bugs and Zombies! There are, granted, some entirely predictable twists at the end, some of which point to a sequel, a serious threat or a promise depending on which side of the fence you're standing on this movie.