Mosquito - Get the cans of 'Raid!'

Yeah, it's a horror film called 'Mosquito.' If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about it then you obviously haven't seen many B-movies with large rubbery monsters.  In a scene that mimics the opening of 'Predator' (for some reason) we see a smaller alien craft break off from its mother ship and land on Earth.  Instead of bugging Arnold Schwarzenegger and his chums, bugs feed off the dead extraterrestrial corpses and grow to giant proportions - something that really turns the locals' day bad.

We meet some characters.  Then some more (without going back to the original pair for longer than you might think).  Then we find that everyone else got sucked to death by giant mosquitos and those who remain are under constant attack from the insects for the rest of the film.

About halfway through, the person I was watching this with commented, 'It's like a computer game.' I thought that was quite a good way of describing it.  Every scene is kind of like a different level where 'you' (in video game terms) have to fend off the enemies for a certain period of time before you can progress to the next stage.

The characters aren't that memorable.  I only realised that one of them was actually 'Leatherface' from the orignal 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' when I was looking this film up online (only then did I get the not-so-subtle reference to the chainsaw during the final act).  But you don't watch a film about giant bugs for the actors - you're there for the effects and the gore - both of which are actually quite good fun.  It's weird - normally the special effects in B-movies are either quite good, or terrible.  Here, you get both.  Some are pretty awesome, where as some look like they've been done in Microsoft Paint and then jiggled around a bit.  The bugs themselves are good when they're actual models interacting with the actors, but a bit rubbish when a blue-screen is required for flying shots.  However, when they go in for the kill the prosthetic gore they inflict on various human victim may well gross you out nicely.

'Mosquito' is a B-movie and never tries to hide it.  I got the feeling that it's a bit of a 'labour of love' by the film-makers.  It doesn't have much of a budget and if you like cheesy horror, daft monster movies or are just in a forgiving mood then it's certainly worth a watch.  About my main complaint was that it could probably do with about ten minutes trimmed out of its overall run-time, as it does drag a bit in places between levels... sorry, scenes.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that