Filthy Review - 'Dragon Wasps'

Dragon Wasps (2012)

Review by Jude Felton

When approaching a movie with a title such as Dragon Wasps, you need to put your mind in the right place. If you go in expecting a deadly serious movie, your mind will probably spontaneously combust and really put a downer on your day. However, if you go into it expecting some SyFy-tastic style giant bug flick, you will probably fair a little better, and your mind will in all likelihood remain intact. Am not totally sure about that, but mine seems okay so far.

The plot follows Gina, an entomologist, who is working in the jungles of Belize. Whilst working there she happens across some items that might explain the whereabouts of her Bio-Geneticist father, who went missing three months prior. So, along with the help of her trusty assistant, they head off, in very short shorts, deep into the jungle to try and find him.

The jungle itself would be a pain in the ass for anyone to travel through, but things don’t get any easier when they come across an Army roadblock. Taken into military custody they explain what they are doing, and somehow manage to persuade the officer in charge, John Hammond, to help them on their mission. All is looking rosy for the intrepid duo now, except for the fact that there are gunrunning drug dealers, led by a fella named Jaguar, who are hell-bent on making things tougher. On top of that there are giant fire-breathing wasps, I shit you not, that keep popping up and whisking folk off.

Dragon Wasps is daft, plain and simple, of that you might have guessed. Reason and logic don’t always play into this movie, although the reasoning behind the wasps is kind of explained, in a round-about way. Like I said though, this isn’t a movie that is to be taken seriously, and if you do then more fool you.

Visually it’s pretty much what you might expect; there’s some decent eye-candy, lots of dodgy acting and some ropey looking CGI. Hell, it’s called Dragon Wasps for chrissakes! It's a cheap and cheerful B movie that doesn’t demand anything of the audience, aside from some serious suspension of disbelief.

I watched the film with my 6 year old son and he dug it. He likes these sort of films; big bugs or any other sort of mutated form of critter, so that’s saying something. Did I enjoy it? Well, it didn’t offend me as I had a good idea of what to expect before I watched it. Is it good? Not really, but there are a few laughs to be had, intentional or otherwise.

Overall, if you like SyFy’s output you’ll probably get some enjoyment out of it. If not, then you probably aren’t going to watch it anyway.

Dragon Wasps is released on R2 DVD by Chelsea Films on September 17th.