Locusts: the 8th plague

So, I'm sitting in front of the television on a Saturday afternoon. The obvious choice? SciFi original movies! My favorite fare, not only because of the bad special effects and B-team plot lines, but also because of bad acting! Hooray!

Today you will get a running commentary (written as I watch!) of "Locusts: the 8th plague," a SciFi original movie now entering the same hall of fame as "Mansquito," "Raptor Island," "Gargoyles: Wings of Darkness" and "Painkiller Jane."

The movie opens with creepy music, creepy font and a creepy locusty background for the credits. I'M SO CREEPED OUT. We find ourselves at the SiloGen Research Center in Prarie, Idaho (get it? SILOgen? Locusts? Locusts eat crops? On praries? In Idaho, where they have praries? Come on SciFi, perhaps I should call up Darth Maul and Johnny Blaze and let them know you're theme naming) where people are testing...something...with really CGI-looking bugs - we assume they're locusts because of the title of the movie. Turns out they're testing locusts that eat other locusts and bugs, but not crops. Living pesticide! Whee!!! Whoopsies, during the testing one of the external vents opened. GEE WILL THE LOCUSTS ESCAPE? I DON'T KNOW. They send down a guy to repair it who subsequently gets ripped apart by the swarm, who then proceeds to fly away (leave all this to yesterday...). Are you surprised? I'm not surprised. This guy is mauled, too. TOTALLY mauled. We meet the hero of the movie, a pretty boy who manufactures organic bug repellent and his vapid, blond girlfriend. He's manufactured a repellent that works! Yay! Back at SiloGen, the man's body is discovered. We discover that the guys who own the locusts are two, one who wants to notify the public about the locust threat and one who's greedy and doesn't want to lose the money they've spent or their reputations. BUT WHAT WILL THE LOCUSTS EAT??? SURELY NOT...PEOPLE!?!?!? The answer comes when a farm family and a cow get mauled in a field. It's conveniently the family that our hero interacts with a la checking on how his bug repellant works so SciFi doesn't have to pay more extras. COMMERCIAL.

Returning from break, hero returns to "Farm Maul" to get paid and instead finds himself surrounded by dead bodies. That has to suck. "I'm sorry, we don't have your paycheck, but we do have these dead bodies! Will that work?" He also finds a dead locust...IT'S EVIDENCE!!! Here's the thing: the bodies are still really full of flesh, so these locusts are really wasteful. A shame, really. Outside the USDA (where he goes to get help?) hero sees a man preaching about the locust plague from Revelations...is anyone surprised by any of this? I'm not. Turns out vapid blond girlfriend works with the USDA and they've had lots of reports of this mauling stuff. Hero gets an inside look at some pieces of a mauled cattle. There's a bloody cow skull where they find one of the locusts and find cow tissue in its stomach. Turns out vapid blonde's Dad is one of the SiloGen owners, and hero used to work there. Yay for keeping it in the family (and off SciFi's payroll)!

Cut to a familly eating a picnic in a park. Kid discovers the swarm and the parents are killed. Kid hides in and tries to drive the family car (unconvincingly - he drives like little kids pretend to, with lots of swerving) and drives the car into a tree. He falls over and passes out. COMMERCIAL.

Hero confronts dear old Dad about the swarm killings.
"But...but it's my life's work!"
"You just think about the fact that your life's work just killed a lot of innocent people! Now go have a time out!"
Don't worry though, dear old Dad engineered the swarm to die after two days, so everything should be fine...right? RIGHT??? OH MY GOD WILL EVERYTHING BE OKAY AFTER TWO DAYS I DON'T KNOW????? Bad guy confronts dear old Dad about the fact that they're going to jail soon. Cut to a policeman finding the kid's crashed car. His convo with someone over radio:
"No sign of any killer bees or anything."
"They're locusts"
"Yeah, but 'killer locusts' doesn't have the same ring to it."
I'm pretty sure this is a reference to the fact that they tried to name the movie "Killer Locusts of the SiloGen Kind" or something dumb like that. Policeman saves the kid and they speed away. COMMERCIAL.

Policeman delivers kid to hospital. Hero and vapid blonde try to track the swarm. A team (or, uh, one guy 'cause they didn't want to pay the rest?) is summoned from Washington and given enough information to bring anyone who's just tuned in up to speed with the...plot? Kid remains in shock and can't give them any info. Whoops, turns out the swarm is breeding! IF YOU'RE SURPRISED YOU'RE REAL DUMB. COMMERCIAL.

Washington team arrives. OMG he bred more guys while in the helicopter! Can they fly helicopters from Washintgon to Idaho? Why is the USDA dealing with this anyway? Isn't there a branch of the government that functions like the FFA or 4-H or something? I thought the USDA just graded meats! Cut to two guys playing motocross out in the woods because they're idiots who don't read the paper. They get mauled. MAULED. WITH BLOOD. Hero and vapid blond have a romantic moment outside. Wait. Outside? Aren't they the ones warning everyone to stay away from these locusty things? Anyway, the hero spouts some crap about environmental issues which kills the romantic moment that felt sort of dumb anyway. Cut to the following day. The team (which has grown spontaneously AGAIN) and hero and VB (vapid blond) find "the nest" in the caves where the little boy and his family were attacked. They stalk through the caves with guns and aren't attacked by locusts (don't ask why, it's clearly not important) while hero gets samples (of what? For what purpose? Lord only knows) and then they try to pesticide the swarm. It doesn't work because they're bioengineered or something, so they burn the larvae, which makes the swarm mad and it proceeds to kill a lot of the team but mysteriously does not harm hero or VB. PREDICTABLE'D. COMMERCIAL.

Sad music and sad people for sad dead members of the team. VB is vapidly depressed. Hero offers pretty, cardboard-like comfort. The SciFi special effects team is obviously having a lot of fun creating these dead bloody bodies, because we get shots of scores of them every time there's an excuse for one. The team guy is authorized to use "military grade pesticide UD-66." Are you laughing? Military grade pesticide? Seriously? VB issues orders to use it while hero runs off objectionably in a huff to find out why he and VB weren't attacked.
"But if you spray that stuff over Idaho, like, nothing will grow for like 10 years you guys!"
VB demands a list of all outdoor activities in the county over the next 24 hours. We see shots of a theme park which is attacked so the SciFi blood effects guys get to play some more.

(On another note, I had this conversation with my mother:
Mom: Why haven't these people heard about the swarm?
Me: Mom, you're asking plot questions.
Mom: Oh, I'm sorry.)

The plan is to hit the locusts with pesticide from choppers, but hero finds out that pesticide...only makes them stronger? Question mark? They've tempted the locusts with a yummy herd of cows, and blood is quite literally everywhere, so this gets better every minute. The locusts take out a HELICOPTER. THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER. COMMERCIAL.

WASHINGTON IS PISSED AND SCARED. THEY'RE SO SCARED THEY'RE PISSING. Back at the USDA, people are...still preaching? Seriously? WE GET IT SCIFI. IT'S A PLAGUE. Oh wait...the Lord's children will be spared you say? So...hero and VB are the Lord's children? Head team guy and hero have a big nose-to-nose fight that almost becomes a makeout session. Hero figures out that the locusts are attracted to pesticides, and that they didn't attack him and VB because they only eat...organic food? The Lord's children...only buy organic? Hero hops in a plane to hit the locusts with his organic pesticide. It works and they fall like rain! Sad face, there's not enough to hit all the locusts. VB goes to see dear old Dad for help. Look, it's becoming real hard to suppress my own plot questions here. COMMERCIAL.

Dear old Dad is confronted, and will help them. Bad guy gets eaten by locusts for moral closure (but seriously, would you really drive with your windows down in a situation like this? Kick on the AC, man). The good guys use a "pheremone lure" to get the locusts to follow hero's plane toward the "testing dome." The dome is rigged to explode. The locusts are successfully lured, but the explosive doesn't work. Hero flies off: "See y'all at the end of the movie!" Surprise surprise, daddy dearest makes the noble sacrifice and is eaten by the locusts to manually set off the explosive device. Unreasonably large explosion ensues.

(Meg: Why doesn't the girl go in and set off the explosion? She eats organic food and they won't eat her! Plus the detonator gave him 30 seconds so she could have gotten out!
Me: You're asking plot questions again.
Meg: *grumble grumble*)

VB and hero meet in a field and hug, and he somehow knows about how her father died.
A mysterious truck is seen carrying "live specimens" from SiloGen to somewhere in Indiana. WHAT A CLIFFHANGER.

Best movie EVER, clearly.