Larva

Synopsis: A veterinarian, played by Sci-Fi channel vet Vincent Ventresca, starts a new job in a small town. Before he is able to settle into his new position a local farmer calls him in, played by genre vet William Forsythe, who has a sick cow. The cow's condition quickly deteriorates, culminating with a large creature bursting from stomach. After dispatching said creature the pair begin to investigate the possible cause. It seems that the local corporation has been giving feed away to all of the local farms. Before you can say bad CGI the town is infested with the large mutant parasites. Will anyone survive? Can the parasites be stopped?

The Good: This is not a great film, but it does have a couple of things going for it. The story moves along quickly. The central characters are introduced with a minimum amount of background and are thrown into action almost immediately. Since the characters are really the basic archetypes that are expected to appear in a film like this is a good thing. Also I’m a very big fan of William Forsythe. He isn’t really given much to work with here, but I still really enjoyed his character in this film. It seems to me he knew exactly the kind of film they were making and is having a good time in his role.

The Bad: Good god when will filmmakers learn? If you don’t’ have a big budget avoid CGI at all costs! The mutated parasites are all done with CGI. There is absolutely no detail to the creatures as all. In most cases they appear to be black blobs that streak across the screen. When you are making a monster movie you had better be able to do better than this. The creatures in this film are so damn silly looking that any tension or scares are reduced to snickers.

The Score: 1.5 of 4

This film reminds me of the cheesy monster movies of the 50’s that I watched growing up. Even though I can’t really recommend renting or purchasing it if you get a chance to catch it during one of its Sci-Fi channel reruns do so.

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