Dateline… Belizean jungles. A scientist
and his assistant have uncovered some critical info that's
going to blow this lid off this sucker. Apparently a
giant corporation is doing some unethical type experiments
which somehow shakes out to the creation of giant, fire
breathing wasps. Now I don't remember why they did this,
or how they planned to monetize this experiment of theirs or
how the existence of giant fire breathing wasps could be of
any benefit to anybody on the planet Earth, but there it
is. Don't look now, but our scientist and his assistant
are now carried away by these wasps… let's just call them
'Dragon Wasps', and now adventure is afoot.
Say hello to the lovely entomologist Gina Humphries as played
by the lovely Dominika Juliet who happens to have one of the
better hot chick names in the movie business. Gina is
looking for her old man, who we already know has been carted
off by giant fire-breathing wasps, and she has coerced her
best friend Rhonda (Nikolette Noel) into helping out.
Nikolette Noel isn't that bad of a hot chick name
either. Actually Gina lied to Rhonda about this trip,
telling her they were doing research when instead they were
actually going into the realm of drug dealing psychopaths and
giant wasps to look for her father. Gina is now
officially the worst friend ever. And while I don't want
to spoil anything for you, Gina was the worst friend ever even
before Rhonda had something unfortunate happen to her, which
only cements Gina as the worst friend ever, and there will
never, ever be a worst friend that will pop up. Ever.
However, for Gina and Rhonda to get to drug dealing, dragon
wasp land, they need the assistance of hardcore mercenary
Capt. John Hammond (Corin Nemec) and his right hand man Sgt.
Meyers (Benjamin Easterday). There are more soldiers
around, but we're not going concern ourselves with them too
much. Hammond says 'hell no, we won't go!' but somehow
Gina convinces him, I can't remember how, and now the journey
has begun.
First, Hammond and his crew engage in a
firefight with the psycho drug dealer Jaguar (Gildon Rowland),
with this being interrupted by the dragon wasps. You
might have thought you heard bullets flying, but the dragon
wasps heard a dinner bell.
This situation turns out bad for Hammond and a bunch of his
soldiers, and the only recourse they have is to make it back
to the lair of The Jaguar for help, because Jaguar's voodoo
medicine is awesome and for some reason the wasps aren't
attacking Jaguar's enclave. This is also around the time
we meet Jaguar's voodoo priestess, and while we don't have a
name for this young woman, if you were to ask me, she has
stardom written all over extremely flat belly.
Stardom.
Why aren't the wasps attacking Jaguar's voodoo enclave?
Duh… cocaine. Surely you knew that cocoa powder and its
leaves are like Off insect repellent to wasps. Everyone
knows that. And don't try to Google that information
because it is so well known that you will find nothing to
support it. It's like Googling 'Is the sky blue?'
Which will give you some information only further supporting
the premise that wasps not liking cocoa leaves is even more
well known.
The situation for Hammond and his crew is a dire one.
Jaguar is on one side and he's nuts, dragon wasps are on the
other side and they are nuts, with the worst being that
Hammond, Gina, and Meyers have to make a special trip to the
dragon wasps lair to rescue some folks, like the good friend
who was tricked into going on this mission in the first
place. Worst Friend Ever. Seriously.
Is 'Dragon Wasps', directed by John Knee, a good movie?
Of course it isn't, you know it isn't, we all knew this the
second we heard the title. Actually seeing the movie
doesn't change our approach to this end result either.
We could delve into the reasons for this conclusion, such as
the shoddy CGI effects, the extremely suspect acting by anyone
in this movie sporting the XX chromosome, no matter how hot
they were, the concept of corporations making giant wasps…but
why concentrate on that stuff, which you already know it will
probably be there before you click the 'buy' button from your
VOD provider, when we should, and shall focus on what makes
'Dragon Wasps' semi-awesome.
Like Corin Nemec for example. Finally living up to the
promise that he teased us with in the epic 'Mansquito', which
if I remember correctly received a shout out in this
movie. Yes, this might be a cheesy, low budget
SyFy-esque film with lousy CGI effects, but somebody forgot to
give Corin the memo who handled the role of the hardcore Capt.
Hammond like he was Martin Sheen in 'The Deer Hunter'.
In fact, Gildon Rowland as the insane Jaguar and Benjamin
Easterday as Hammond's Good Man Friday made for a very solid
acting crew. Yes, the ladies didn't fare as well, but
they had other things to fall back on.
And while the CGI was crap, at least the few prosthetic wasps
were pretty nice. And of course these are the kind of
wasps that like to lay eggs in your brain, so that led to a
few choice special effects that probably aren't for the
queasy, but it did give this movie a solid lift. Come on
now, bugs popping out of people's skulls is always a good
thing. They didn't breathe fire enough though. If
I had the ability to breathe fire I'd do it all the time but I
guess the fire-breathing budget was kind of low for this one.
Yes, 'Dragon Wasps' isn't a good movie, but starting at that
crap baseline I'm glad to say the end result was slightly
above it. We can't be mad about that.
