King of the Ants
King of the Ants is another movie from cult director Stuart Gordon. The film is about a loser that moves to L.A. to paint houses. While he’s painting a house, he meets an electrician that is connected to a dirty building contractor. He goes to work for the dirty contractor and he winds up getting a job following a lawyer around town.
Through a series of misunderstandings, the main character kills the lawyer and then is stiffed on the paycheck. The contractor and his buddies spend a few weeks fucking the guy up in a shitty shed and then he is escapes out into the world again. It sounds interesting and with a bigger budget and some other minor tweaks it could have been a really good film.Stuart Gordon drops the ball on this production. The film has a variety of plot holes and never follows up on ideas that are explored in the movie. I lay this all at Stuart Gordon’s feet. The film also suffers from some of the poorest handheld video I’ve ever seen. The majority of scenes are shaky, poorly lit and remarkably sparse in a “look how cheap we are” sense. The film plods along and, except for a killer first half, most of the film is pretty boring. The only reason to see this movie is because of the brutality that is present in the first half of the film, which is actually fairly disturbing, if you haven’t turned the movie off by then.
The worst part of the film is the main character. The guy seriously can’t act. I don’t understand why they couldn’t cast someone in the role that actually had some skill, when they wasted cash on actors like Ron Livingston (Office Space, Swingers), George Wendt (Spice World, Edmond), Daniel Baldwin (Vampires, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man), and Kari Wuhrer (Hellraiser: Deader, Eight Legged Freaks). In a movie that is basically driven by a character that undergoes an amazing transformation, you’d kind of want an actor that can convey some sense of that transformation. Instead, we get Chris McKenna (Art School Confidential, Daydreamer) looking like a retard throughout the film. I haven’t seen such a dearth of charisma since I first saw Zach Braff on Scrubs.
The rest of the cast is wasted in a movie that is ruined by bad cinematography and poor writing. Kari Wuhrer shows up to show her implant-less boobies, sport a dick, and eat some turds… and oddly enough I enjoyed her performance in the film. Daniel Baldwin, or Chunky Baldwin as I like to call him, shows up as the sleazy building contractor and even though he is fully capable of playing a terrific scumbag, the writing and dialogue don’t take full advantage of his skills.
King of the Ants also suffers from thematic confusion. The film tries to force some shitty ant metaphor down the viewer’s throats, but the idea is so thin and poorly fleshed out that it never actually means anything. The main character’s “nothing matters” speech is completely contradictory to the fact that he is trying to take revenge for what people did to him. The film is either intentionally hypocritical or just plain shitty and about as deep as a Chihuahua’s anus.
The fanboy in me wants to like the movie just because it’s Stuart Gordon, but the critic in me will tell you that this is just a piece of poorly written garbage that has a few cool scenes of brutality and poop eating.
Final Synopsis: This is a pretty weak film from Stuart Gordon. You’d be better off watching some of his other movies. The film is bad in several important departments, character development, cinematography, and theme being the main areas. I recommend that you stay away from this one… watch Re-Animator instead.
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