They Nest starts one night in the 'Northwest Atlantic Ocean' during a thunderstorm where a sailor on a boat is unceremoniously bound, gagged & thrown overboard... Boston hospital emergency room doctor Benjamin Cahill (Thomas Calabro) has lost his nerve & needs a break, he heads for Noah's Island in Cusco Bay in Maine where he has recently brought a rundown house & intends to spend some time doing it up. Unfortunately Dr. Cahill arrives on the island at the same time the sailor's body washes up ashore with an unwanted passenger, a large cockroach like insect that paralyses it's living victims before laying it's eggs in them to gestate & hatch within a free meal. Soon the bodies begin to mount as the hordes of insects work their way through the local population, it's up to the doc to work out what's going on & convince a disbelieving townspeople before it's too late...
Directed by Ellroy Elkayem this made-for-TV creature feature about nasty cockroach's is slightly below average for me for the genre. Not to be confused with the similar sounding Roger Corman produced genetically created killer cockroach flick The Nest (1988) this is a fairly slow going collection of clichés. From the outsider who is shunned by the local townspeople & given the cold shoulder to a local Sheriff, from the isolated small community location to the killer insect menace that when the bodies start to show up no-one believes anything sinister is going on until things have reached a dangerous plateau. There's nothing new or original in the script by co-producers John Claflin & Daniel Zelman, nothing that us creature feature veterans haven't seen a hundred times before & nothing we won't see a hundreds more before our killer bug/animal/alien/monster film viewing days are over. They Nest is very professional & well written to a point, the character's are pretty good, the arguments & situations they find themselves in are fairly believable & the story makes reasonable sense. The films explanation for the cockroach's is that they are a new undiscovered species, if that was the case & these cockroach things exist why haven't anyone come across them before? If these things breed so fast why wasn't the entire boat at the start infected & the crew either dead or full of more eggs? Then again I suppose we really shouldn't think about it too much as the filmmakers obviously hoped we wouldn't. My main problem with They Nest is that it's so generic, forgettable & routine with a snail's pace so that it's a chore to sit through even once, there are much better killer cockroach films out there (The Nest being one) & there are better killer bug films out there too.
Director Elkayem does a good job & the film looks really nice, it looks better than most made-for-TV flicks that I have seen anyway. Unfortunately the sporadic bursts of action come few & far between & are quite lethargic, they are not scary, there's no tension or atmosphere & the ending is rubbish as well. If that wasn't bad enough this is PG stuff all the way without a trace of blood or gore, that definitely counts as a strike against it as far as I am concerned. The special effects are decent enough although they are limited to the CGI computer graphic animated cockroach variety.
With a very healthy sounding $4,000,000 budget this actually had a fair amount of money thrown at it & it shows with high production values throughout. Apparently shot in Vancouver in British Columbia in Canada but set in Maine. The acting is alright by a largely unknown cast although Dean Stockwell showed up for a few days filming as the Sheriff & despite near top billing in the credits doesn't get much screen time.
They Nest is a slightly below average creature feature, it's slow going for the majority of the run time but it's well made. It's all very middle of the road, clichéd, routine & predictable stuff, personally it didn't do that much for me.
Directed by Ellroy Elkayem this made-for-TV creature feature about nasty cockroach's is slightly below average for me for the genre. Not to be confused with the similar sounding Roger Corman produced genetically created killer cockroach flick The Nest (1988) this is a fairly slow going collection of clichés. From the outsider who is shunned by the local townspeople & given the cold shoulder to a local Sheriff, from the isolated small community location to the killer insect menace that when the bodies start to show up no-one believes anything sinister is going on until things have reached a dangerous plateau. There's nothing new or original in the script by co-producers John Claflin & Daniel Zelman, nothing that us creature feature veterans haven't seen a hundred times before & nothing we won't see a hundreds more before our killer bug/animal/alien/monster film viewing days are over. They Nest is very professional & well written to a point, the character's are pretty good, the arguments & situations they find themselves in are fairly believable & the story makes reasonable sense. The films explanation for the cockroach's is that they are a new undiscovered species, if that was the case & these cockroach things exist why haven't anyone come across them before? If these things breed so fast why wasn't the entire boat at the start infected & the crew either dead or full of more eggs? Then again I suppose we really shouldn't think about it too much as the filmmakers obviously hoped we wouldn't. My main problem with They Nest is that it's so generic, forgettable & routine with a snail's pace so that it's a chore to sit through even once, there are much better killer cockroach films out there (The Nest being one) & there are better killer bug films out there too.
Director Elkayem does a good job & the film looks really nice, it looks better than most made-for-TV flicks that I have seen anyway. Unfortunately the sporadic bursts of action come few & far between & are quite lethargic, they are not scary, there's no tension or atmosphere & the ending is rubbish as well. If that wasn't bad enough this is PG stuff all the way without a trace of blood or gore, that definitely counts as a strike against it as far as I am concerned. The special effects are decent enough although they are limited to the CGI computer graphic animated cockroach variety.
With a very healthy sounding $4,000,000 budget this actually had a fair amount of money thrown at it & it shows with high production values throughout. Apparently shot in Vancouver in British Columbia in Canada but set in Maine. The acting is alright by a largely unknown cast although Dean Stockwell showed up for a few days filming as the Sheriff & despite near top billing in the credits doesn't get much screen time.
They Nest is a slightly below average creature feature, it's slow going for the majority of the run time but it's well made. It's all very middle of the road, clichéd, routine & predictable stuff, personally it didn't do that much for me.