King of the Ants

Rating:
Summary: King rules!!
Review: A wild, well-paced noir crime flick; gory, gruesome and great! Story chronicles how one seemingly ordinary bored underachiever desperate for adventure takes that first terrifying step from which there is really no return. He's ill-prepared to handle all that happens in him and to him after the dirty deed has been carried out ... but even less prepared to just up and walk away. Foretold a few seconds before he reaches his breaking point by the radio playing `Getting stronger every minute ...', he will walk away only when he's good and ready and he's crossed every t and dotted every ... eye. Excellent ensemble, highlighted by newcomer McKenna's incredible star turn.

Rating:
Summary: Shock. Therapy.
Review: Here's a question: why is there so much inequality and injustice in the world?

Let's frame that another way: why is it that some men get exactly what they want right down to their death in a $50 million Bel-Air castle, while others slave miserably to the extremely bitter end, desperately poor and unhappy in the very clutch of Death, cursing God, society, and destiny?

As Stuart Gordon's unlikely protagonist Sean Crawley (Chris McKenna) in the gut-bustingly brutal beating-disguised-as-movie "King of the Ants" might say: "Why does there have to be a reason?"

"King of the Ants" is Gordon's most philosophical movie: "King" has a lot on its mind, no pun intended---and working against type, the movie is brutally straightforward. That makes "King of the Ants" seem strange and foreign and a little unsettling to Gordon regulars. After all, whether he's conjuring up Lovecraft ("The Beyond", "Re-Animator", "Dagon") or cobbling together a warning on the perils of buying real estate sight-unseen ("Castle Freak"), Gordon is a typically baroque director: a Gordon set is a busy set, with lots of devils and lots of details.

Not so here: "King of the Ants" takes that approach, turns it on its head, and plants the sucker face-first into the middle of seamy, steamy Los Angeles. This flick gets straight down to business, plopping its dweeby loser protagonist Sean Crawley down with seemingly affable, amiable fellow housepainter Duke (George Wendt, of whom we will say more later). Crawley is aimless, directionless, pathetic, and eager to please (and make some money on the side): The Duke has an idea and thinks Crawley is the perfect man for the job.

It's a simple plan: follow some schlubbo bureaucraft from City Hall around, keep an eye on him, report his activities back to The Duke. Crawley tries to come across as a shrewd negotiator and a wise-guy with The Duke: I felt embarrassed for him as he quickly and inexorably wilted. For fun, keep an eye on Wendt's facial expressions in this first 'negotiation'.

So naturally, Crawley agrees to the "job", and lamely trails his target on his bicycle, keeping an eye on his mark and---increasingly---on the man's wife (Carlie Westerman). One thing leads to another, and as Yeats said "things fall apart...the center cannot hold": Gears are set in motion, and the rest of "King of the Ants" ratchets like a Devil's Hellride, in which Crawley is subsequently and ruthlessly introduced to greed, lust, murder, betrayal, the oilly Ray Mathews (Daniel Baldwin), Mathews's oillier henchmen, and the amazingly liberating properties of a Number 3-Wood golf club applied early and often, gruesome torture, and a little exposure and starvation thrown in for good measure.

Gordon and his faithful cinematographer Mac Ahlberg (who worked with Gordon on "Robotjox" and "Re-Animator") have managed to cook up a nasty little piece of work: I don't know what it is, but I like it. It's spare. It's edgy. It feels raw, ruthless, hardcore; simple, clean and lethal. Turn off your expectations of what a Gordon film "should" feel like and just let it all sink it, drink it all up: see if you don't think "King of the Ants" feels like a freshman effort by a radical rebel filmmaker---and I mean that in the best possible way.

That's really all you need to know about "King of the Ants" before digging in. That, and the fact that most of the acting is astonishing. Chris McKenna ("Crawley"), an unknown, wears the role like a glove and owns this film: it's amazing to see the wild flare and riptide of emotions over his face. And sure, go into this movie expecting the warm fat cuddliness of Norm from "Cheers": Wendt proves that fat men need not be jolly. He's terrifying and totally plausible. Baldwin is slimy, repulsive, and perfectly tailored to his role: I work with guys like him every day. Carlie Westerman is the lone exception: I didn't buy her role and her willingness to take in a possibly deranged drifter, but Westerman's role is just to get things from point A to point B.

Now, for those of you who have seen the movie, I want to back up what I said earlier about "King" being Gordon at his most philosophical. Some have described "King of the Ants" as being a straightforward 'revenge' story: I agree that it's straightforward, but I don't think it has much to do with revenge. I think it's more of a "personal liberation" movie, or maybe an "Ideas have Consequences" movie.

For the last 40 years we've worked overtime in American society to dethrone our most common, basic assumptions, chief of which is the idea of God, universal Truth, punishment for Evil. I bet if you took an honest poll, about 85% of American schoolkids have as much faith in God as they do in Santa Claus. Maybe that's cynicism talking, but I've got a pretty good pulse on popular culture, and frankly I don't think so.

Where does that leave us? Watch closely what happens when the Duke leads Crawley into the reptile house, and listen to what is said---and then think about this: when we dethrone the Divine, when we eliminate objective Truth in the universe, what else is left but brutal survival? If there is no Good or Evil, no punishment beyond this world, then I should take what I can grab---right? What else is left but doing whatever you want to do? What other threat is there but the threat of death---and if you can master the fear of dying, what limitations do you have? And isn't that truly what is meant by "Freedom"?

The horror of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" was that its scientist started with a monster and worked to create a Man. The horror of "King of the Ants" is that its "scientists" start with a Man and work backwards.


Rating:
Summary: Whoa!
Review: I rented this yesterday and I was completely taken by surprise. I thought it looked lke a moderatly good movie but turned out to be one hell of a movie. The way it is written and directed is superb, they make you feel different emotions for the character throughout: you like him at the beginning, not so much when he kills the guy, pity him when hes being beaten, then almost think hes just another bad guy by the end. I love it. THe nightmare scenes are rather disturbing, the switching of male and female anatomy in one disgusted me beyond belief, and the one where the monster ate its own, you know, my friend almost threw up on himself he was so disgusted. The actor who played crowley was phenomonal, I'm no industry expert but this guy should have a future. Overall, a very underrated movie, with alot of disturbing bits and packed full of emotion and vengeance.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but Disturbing
Review: I was a little misled by the synopsis on the back of the cover and not really familiar with Stuart Gordon's work. I usually like unpopular "different" types of movies, the kind the mainstream audience wouldn't think to watch, but this was definitely not my type of movie. It started off good and had some good familiar actors like George Wendt "Norm" from "Cheers" and Daniel Baldwin, as interesting characters along with some good newcomers. Some of the scenes were slow moving and kinda boring but overall I was getting into the movie.....until the beating and hallucination scene's. I was so disturbed by the end of that sequence that I had to turn off the movie and couldn't watch any more. Usually I'll watch anything, but those images just stay with you and won't leave. VERY INTENSE. I guess the bottom line is if your not familiar with Stuart Gordon's work, you'll probably be in for a surprise!

Rating:
Summary: Gordon rocks. Again. First time in a while.
Review: King of the Ants (Stuart Gordon, 2003)

Stuart Gordon is, of course, best-known for his basement-budget adaptations of Lovecraft, but he's never confined himself solely to the horror film; witness the sci-fi action flick Fortress, or his work in the kids'-film genre (which, while not extensive, does comprise a surprising amount of his production time). Thus, King of the Ants is not as much of a surprise as it would first seem. Unlike most of his previous forays into non-horror, though, King of the Ants delivers in spades.

Sean Crawley (Chris McKenna, previously seen in the TV series Opposite Sex) is a rootless guy who's willing to do just about anything to make a buck. While painting a house one day, he meets an electrician named Duke (Cheers' George Wendt). Duke works for a guy named Ray Matthews (Daniel Baldwin). Matthews needs a guy watched. Crawley has a dumb fantasy about being a private eye. Everyone's happy, until Matthews reveals to Crawley while drunk one night that the guy he's having followed he actually wants dead. From there, things get weird.

Based on a novel by Charles Higson, King of the Ants is in most respects your standard action-revenge fare. (Had it gotten wide release, its timing would have been perfect; Blake Crouch's book Desert Places came out around the same time, and the two have a good deal in common.) Where it rises above is in its characters. Much has been made of Sean's move from being a basically likable drifter into being a basically likable killer, and it probably says more about me than about the movie that I didn't see it as being all that much a stretch (thus, my being impressed comes from different areas); if you're the kind of person who thinks such a transformation would be something to see, by all means, rent this. More surprising, to me, was the detail to be found in even the minor characters. One expects development from Ray and Duke, but in most action flicks, the other henchmen who form Ray's band of criminals would just be there as window dressing. Not so here; the other two guys on the team (capably played by Vernon Wells, the villain in Schwarzenegger vehicle Commando, and Lionel Mark Smith, recently seen in State and Main, Magnolia, and Life Among the Cannibals) are fully-fleshed minor players. One assumes they were even more fleshed out in the novel, but that the adaptation didn't jettison their characters altogether is one of the things that makes this such a fine film.

Definitely worth seeing. Not for the weak of stomach by any means, but a fine thrill-ride. *** ½

Rating:
Summary: Happy Birthday Mom
Review: Okay, let me explain the title. I call this review Happy Birthday Mom because in the middle of the movie i stopped the movie to call my mom and wish her a happy birthday. The typical thought would be that I bought this dvd for my mother as a birthday gift, but I do like my mom, so I wouldn't do that to her. Later in the movie I also stopped it to talk to my friend that lives in Canada. Yeah, I stopped it to talk to a CANADIAN, thats bad.... Well he's just up there for school, so ya know.

Some of it was good, but it could have done better. I have the seemingly harder to come by skill of seperating fiction (movie, game, tv) from real life, so I like the kind of shat that upsets fragile people without that skill. I'm sure some of the violence in this movie made someone cry foul....

And its gets and extra half star simply because Kari Wuhrer is hot in this movie, like every movie she's in!!

Rating:
Summary: overrated
Review: The reviews I read of this are good but the film is not. It's got bad dialogue, poor performances, zero character development, and it doesn't even begin to live up to the "shocks" it seems to promise. The concept of a man who others try to beat into idiocy so that he can' use information against them is interesting, but it's poorly executed. Calling this a traditional revenge story is to do it too much credit.

Rating:
Summary: One ticked off Ant
Review: This certainly wasn't what I expected from a stuart gordon film but it worked nonetheless. Gone are the sci-fi trimmings of re-animator, dagon etc..and in its place is somewhat of a character study. Our subject is sean crowly, who we find painting houses. There he meets Duke (played by the ever rotund George Wendt but in a sinister turn). Its an ill fated meeting as it sets in motion a turn of events from which there is no escape. Before we know it, crowly has killed a man for money, only the people who hired him say they didn't really want him to kill the guy. They don't pay. Crowly's guilt sets in when he realizes the guy he killed was a model citizen. The folks who put out the hit get nervous and decide to tenderize crowly abit. Revenge ensues.
This one was solid from the top down. The acting was good. Once george wendt went from good duke to bad duke, there was no hint of his norm character from cheers to be found. The guy who played crowly was good to. I haven't seen him anywhere before but the kid has a future. Theres one of the baldwin brothers in this one too, the older fatter one from john carpenter's vampires. Maybe he can get out from the shadows of his brothers now. He brings his corrupt real estate developer character to life. Direction is good.
Gore:Theres a good amount of red sauce flying around but its more about the sounds in this one. As the golf clubs are put to one guys head, the sound of the bones popping will make you cringe.
T&A: Kari wuher naked as usual. Crowly rolls around in his bed naked whilst having bad dreams.

Rating:
Summary: Splashy and Unimaginitive
Review: This film is the cinematic equivalent of the child who stands at the side of the pool and shouts "Mom, look at me! Watch this! Mom! Mom!" and then executes a non-descript cannonball.

The production team spent a lot of time thinking up sound effects for violence. Heads are chopped off, whacked with golf clubs, and generally treated poorly. Meanwhile we are watching a so-so story with so-so performances (other than the Baldwin brother, who is nice and creepy). There is absolutely nothing done cinematically to produce tension - all the shots are standard medium shots, the lighting is uniform throughout, and the camera seems to have been frozen in place during the entire film. Booooring.

How many times must we see, as a final shot, the protagonist walking away in slow motion while all behind him is devoured by flame? One more time, at least. All in all, a film meant to impress the kids. -Mykal Banta


Rating:
Summary: A King of Films
Review: This is more like a drama that becomes a horror film because of the horrific events that follow. The film so disturbed major studios that they refused to produce it (source: the Featurrette on the DVD). I really liked it but it was disturbing. The main character is a likeable twentysomething man who takes odd jobs where he can. Eventually he's offered and accepts a shady job. And... Just when we've grown to like guy, he proceeds to commit a despicable act and then gets double-crossed for it. How he gets double-crossed and what is done after makes the intense meat of this unique film. All the while we are rooting for the main character as criminal as he is-- which is part of what makes King of the Ants so disturbing. The film is so titled because the main character is referred to, at one point, as an "ant"-- "insignificant". But he begins to regard himself as the "King of the Ants". What a transformation. Not for the faint of heart. Similar to another movie called "May" in which a young lonely girl transforms into something else: May went from drama to horror by the end also.