Too much of everything

Overrated and overhyped

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

THEY CRAWL is ostensibly a cockroach invasion creature flick but when watching you could be forgiven for thinking you're watching a typical movie-of-the-week government conspiracy thriller. The storyline sees a couple of cops on the trail of some naughty scientists into genetic modification who have engineered some super-duper cockroaches as part of research into biological warfare.Those expecting massed creature attacks will surely be disappointed because, inevitably, the cockroach attacks play second fiddle to this rather dull police investigation stuff. The characters just aren't interesting enough to hold the attention and you end up waiting for the next roach attack. Said attacks are animated by CGI, which is expected, and look like they've been heavily inspired by THE MUMMY. They're not bad but not quite as gruesome as you'd expect.Part of the fun here comes from spotting the footage ripped off from other movies - yep, it's a cut 'n' paste production that would make Godfrey Ho proud. I was surprised and delighted by the expensive-looking 'bus out of control' set-piece that opens the movie and sure enough it was stolen from RED HEAT. The producers seem to have a Schwarzenegger fetish as they also borrow liberally from LAST ACTION HERO as well as CHAIN REACTION and RUSH HOUR.Cast-wise, there are slim pickings here with the only recognisable actor being Dennis Boutsikaris, who had a starring role in BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED back in the 1980s. Mickey Rourke makes an amusing cameo as a superhuman killer and there's a little role for B-movie favourite Tim Thomerson pretty much riffing on the John Goodman character from ARACHNOPHOBIA. Things build to a preposterous but admittedly amusing climax in which the cockroaches display some truly unexpected behaviour, but this is B-movie territory all the way.

Another hokey Sci-Fi channel offering, this time the monsters on the loose are smart cockroaches that swarm around a lot. The cucarachas croak a bus driver who likes to smash his bus through office building lobbies, then somebody gets killed in a bombing. You guessed it: a government conspiracy is behind it all. Our heroes include a Jordache Jeans commercial guy (brother of the bombing victim), and a lady cop who shoots anything she sees: roach swarms, boxes, trucks, cars, buildings, into mid-air, and occasionally even a bad guy. When Officer Ripley runs out of ammunition with one weapon, she grabs another gun and resumes firing. As for Jordache, he just sticks his nose everywhere, while bodies pile up. The cop captain is the usual skeptic who does nothing, and the head honcho nasty guy is a comical stereotype, who snarls when he talks. They even had the nerve to use the ridiculous "bad guy pauses to explain the evil plot to the good guys before shooting them" routine. The obvious poetic justice is served, of course.But stay tuned for the grand finale. The debut of one of the most hilariously inept monster creatures ever spawned still awaits you. He was about as intimidating as a Teletubby, and the final scene had me laughing until I could hardly breathe.A hilariously stupid movie.

I have noticed in a lot of my reviews I have mentioned how beer may make the movie better. There is not enough beer on Earth to make this movie watchable!!! This movie just...SUCKED!! Bad acting,story,plot,effects and so on. It's not even bad in a good way and I like bad movies. I have had more entertaining dumps than this flick!!

This film could easily be a comedy, unless someone is 15 years old or younger. Rourke shows up only once and for about 5 min. The man obviously doesn't take his job seriously, not anymore... The whole concept of this movie is a joke! We 've seen it again hundreds of times. And the final scene! What an idea! Thousands of programmed mutant-robot-(god knows what else)-cockroaches come together to form a giant monster cockroach!!! GIVE US PEOPLE A BREAK!