Reviewed By

Christopher Armstead
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. 
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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.
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