The Swarm Movie Review: Intense, creepy and all-out horrific

This French indie horror takes the best cues from the genre to tell a creepy, grounded tale about a bereaved family

Bhuvanesh Chandar

(Originally published on 6th August 2021)

There’s a frame in The Swarm that shows a wall poster of what looks like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, a work of art that relates the human body to the working of the universe. The whole film can be thought of as an extension of this idea, but through the monster horror prism.

In an unnamed countryside in France, single mother Virginie (Suliane Brahim) struggles to provide for her children: Laura (Marie Narbonne), a late teen, and her younger brother Gaston (Raphael Romand). Virginie harvests locusts on her farm and tries to sell the high-protein produce to her customers. Her sales pitch also works: “There are more proteins in 100 grams of these locusts than in 150 grams of meat.” However, the declining number of locusts and the dissatisfied customers who aren’t ready to shell more threaten the family’s livelihood. Soon, during a fit of rage, Virginie realises that the locusts that she so ardently cultivated have a taste for blood and that feasting on blood lets them grow bigger and reproduce on a large scale. I’m sure you can guess where the movie is headed.

To be fair, the film hardly tries to mask its intentions. The very first shot is an overhead establishment shot that…

Read the full review here:

https://www.cinemaexpress.com/international/review/2021/aug/06/the-swarm-movie-review-this-creature-feature-is-good-horror-25936.html