They Nest
R2 - United Kingdom - Mosaic Movies
Review written by and copyright: Samuel Scott (22nd May 2013).
The Film

***This is a technical review only. For reviews on the movie from various critics, we recommend visiting HERE.***

Off the coast of Maine an Afica cargo vessle mysteriously explodes and crashes into the harbour. What no one knows is that the crew had already been dead for days...

Meanwhile, Dr. Ben Cahill (Thomas Calabro) arrives on Orrs Island to resolve some personal problems and receives a hostile reception. The locals do not like outsiders and in particular, Jack Wald (John Savage), the town's electrician, does his best to make Ben feel unwelcome.

Soon bizarre and frightening deaths start to occur on the island. Each victim appears to have died by natural causes, yet each has red insect bite marks on their flesh. When Wald's dead body is discovered all fingers point to Ben. To clear his name, Ben forms an autopsy to establish the true cause of Wald's death. He is horrified to discover insect cocoon's filling the man's chest cavity. A rare breed of African cockroaches has invaded the island and they are using the insides of human beings as breeding grounds.

When a new hybrid of flying coackroaches are born and begin to engulf the island, the town's people must run for their lives to escape the hoards of bugs or be eaten alive!

Video

Mosaic Movies have released Ellory Elkayem's creature feature cropped down to a full screen aspect ratio of 1.33:1, which, judging by the way characters can be cut off from the sides of the frame, is not open matte. The original aspect ratio is 1.85:1. When such severe cropping is a problem it is always hard to give a high mark for picture quality, no matter how pristine it may be. If this wasn't cropped, it would get a higher mark than I'm giving as this transfer is generally free of any major problems.

Although there are some compression artefacts at times, there are no real problems with scratches or dirt here. Edge enhancement is minimal and colours are, for the most part, quite sharp. The film uses a lot of poor lighting and dark scenarios, obviously intended with the blue hues, and although this can lessen details of the locations and items in the background, it's still sharp enough to show what is required. At times, the blacks lack definition but it isn't bad enough to be a distraction.

The transfer is PAL, disc is region 2 encoded, and the feature runs for 88 minutes, 31 seconds.

Audio

There is a single audio option available here:
- English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo

There is some reasonable seperation between the two channels, most noticeably for Vinny Golia's rather standard atmospheric score. Nature and weather background effects of the small Maine island are well utilised, though a film such as this is certainly missing the pros that a more immersive and deeper 5.1 track could bring to the table. There were no signs of audio damage, no scratches, and dialogue was always clear.

There are no subtitles included.

Extras

There are several minor extras included but unfortunately nothing of note. There's a photo gallery, some production notes, some factoids about cockroaches, and a theatrical trailer.

Overall

The Film: C Video: C- Audio: C+ Extras: E Overall: C-

 


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