Ticks



AKA: Infested

A pair of social workers take a group of 5 inner-city teens on a wilderness retreat. It’s meant to be a way to try to get the group of diverse teens to bond and work together. But they’re not there for a day before their rather innocent outdoor outing goes awry. Some of the local farmers up near the cabin they’re staying at have secretly taken up illegal pot growing. To make the crop grow faster, the greedy growers have been spraying their crops with a concoction of artificial growth hormones. It’s succeeded in making the plants grow faster, yes, but it’s also inadvertently affected something else: the local wood tick population. The chemicals have somehow caused the ticks to grow into the size of rats, and also increased their thirst for blood. So now not only do our little group of inner-city city slickers have to deal with a bunch of paranoid, greedy drug lord hillbillies, but they also have to figure out a way to avoid a swarm bloodthirsty giant insects.



Considering what else I’ve watched so far this month, I figured it was only right to close out the month with yet another giant monster flick. Although, if you’re doing a size comparison, the critters from Ticks aren’t really all that big, even by “Oh my god! The giant bugs are attacking!” horror movie standards. But while they’re not all that big there certainly are A LOT of them to contend with, so that does make their threat a bit harder to deal with. Though the way half of the film plays out almost makes them feel like they’re not that big of a menace. The real threat seems to be the pair of crazy local farmers who appear to think they’re starring in an episode of The Hillbilly Sopranos. When compared to those two clowns the bugs almost feel like an afterthought. Because it’s the people who cause the most carnage in this movie. Really, up until the end it feels like the biggest threat the ticks pose is the very real danger of a serious breakout of Lyme disease. But then again, I guess calling the movie Crazy Hillbilly Drug Lords wouldn’t really work with the theme they were going for.


Might be a fun idea for a different movie, though.

For the most part the movie is a fun (if flawed) B-horror flick. It’s got a cast featuring Peter Scolari, Alfonso Ribeiro, Seth Green and Clint Howard. Which may not knock the socks off of some people, but I assure you that it’s a better cast than a Direct-to-Video film like this deserves. Except maybe Clint Howard (I kid…but I don’t). Even better? There’s five “kids” in the cast, and none of their characters end up being outright annoying little shits. A couple of them might be a little dumb maybe, that’s pretty par for the course for these types of movies, but the script didn’t go out of its way to make any of them so bad as to deliberately try to piss me off. Which was nice, and also a rarity in a film filled with “troubled” teens. And even the visuals still manage to hold up pretty well. Brian Yuzna was listed as a producer on this film, so I kinda had high hopes for the effects department, and the movie did not disappoint. The ticks are slimy and bloody, and squish into a gooey, icky mess. They can appear a little “plastic-y” in some scenes, but for the most part they look pretty good. Plus, again, there’s a lot of them, so I can appreciate the effort they put into making all of the little buggers regardless. There’s even a “giant” tick that literally crawls out of the corpse of one of the dead characters in the film’s climax, which adds a nice icky body horror exclamation point to the end of the already icky feature. Honestly, at this point I expect nothing less from a horror film with Brian Yuzna’s name attached to it.

The biggest ding the movie has in the visual department is that it’s clear they had to use miniatures in a couple of the later scenes that involve the forest fire and the cabin burning. Which is perfectly understandable, since I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to start a real-life forest fire.

My biggest issue with the film is the same one I usually have with movies like this: the story. Or rather, the smaller, stupider story elements that films like this like to haphazardly tack together, because the general base plot is just fine. For instance, the movie highly suggests (or outright states, I forget which) that the social workers, Charles and Holly, have helped kids before by going on this little wilderness retreat. But the movie seems to show the complete opposite. It’s clear they’ve made zero plans regarding activities for their little trip beyond grilling some hamburgers. They have equipment with them, but they don’t organize anything, and the cabin they’re in looks like it’s not even ready for their arrival, so it’s pretty clear they’ve prepared nothing for this trip. They also don’t seem all that interested in the kids in general. They seem more interested in getting it on with each other in their own cabin, often leaving all the kiddies alone to their own devices. Not to mention that all these “troubled” teens barely seem to fit the criteria of “troubled.” Only three of them seem to have genuine issues, and most of those seem like they could have been more easily (and better) addressed with good old fashioned therapy. The other two just seem to be entitled rich kids, and the last one is Charles’ daughter, Melissa, who appears to have been dragged along on this trip against her will. So it’s just a complete mystery what anyone was planning to get out of this outing, or even how they planned to accomplish it.

No, really, why are you two here?

Then there’s the way the move treats the ticks. The poor film just can’t seem to decide how mutated/badass these things are. It states early on, with a normal sized tick, that the little pests are hard to kill and need to be removed with fire. But then later on it seems to really waffle on just how hard to kill and remove they really are. Sometimes a character has to struggle to get one off of them, and other times it pops right off without any effort. Throwing something at one doesn’t phase it, but apparently they’re so delicate that you can easily squash one against a couch cushion. And I don’t know what was in that growth hormone, but apparently it was extremely flammable, because fire doesn’t just make the ticks let go of their prey. Instead just the slightest touch of it is enough to make the little bastards explode like little puss-filled water balloons. Which is icky, and also kind of funny when you think about it, but not something that actually happens if you expose a real-life tick to an open flame.

If it did I guarantee there would be a lot of YouTube videos about it.

And that’s Ticks. Small issues aside, it’s actually a surprisingly fun little B-movie romp. As long as you can appreciate it for what it is, it’s pretty entertaining as long as you can ignore the smaller story elements. Cause let’s face it, the story’s kinda dumb. Especially when you realize that there are no real heroes in this tale, because the two main villains are so gloriously incompetent that their actions not only manage to take out all the ticks (that they themselves helped create), but also, themselves. So there’s nothing more for the kids or idiot social workers to do but run like hell and let the fire do the rest. Which is…kinda anticlimactic. So yeah, not great, but fun for what it is. So if you like cheesy monster movies and practical effects, then this should be a nice, quick watch. But if you want something with a story that’s better put together then this is not for you.

Ticks is available on a variety of streaming services.

Ticks is also available on DVD, and a special 4K Bluray from our weird movie distributor friends over at Vinegar Syndrome.

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