Why do I do this to myself? I hate bugs; I hate pests; stories of invasive species creep me the fuck out; but damned if I ain't always drawn to documentaries on this shit. As soon as I saw that Netflix had a short film on the invasive fire ant species that has decimated crops in the Southern US for the past bunch of decades, I was pissed at myself. I knew, despite my best efforts to avoid it, I'd end up watching this shit. You see, I'm a worrier by nature. If I ain't got something in my life to legitimately concern myself over, I'll search for things to fill that void. Life going ok now? How can I change that? How can I make myself feel that everything is on the verge of falling apart? I guess I'm addicted to stress. Who knows why? But it's there.
(Incidentally, as you can tell from the title, this mini-doc is in 3D—so glad my computer doesn't have that capability. Which, by the way, who the fuck would wanna watch this shit in 3D? My guess: the same kind of person who'd get a kick out of 3D surgical films and 3D snuff films. What I'm saying, anyone who tells you they want to see a 3D film on the the insects that will one day destroy us, has a basement stacked with bodies. But, of course, that could just be my "eww, insects, gross; get 'em away from me" bias talking.)
So, yeah, this doc would prove a perfect way to fill that stress need. But I'd be lying if I said that was the only reason I was interested. Despite everything I just said, I've always found ants strangely fascinating. I guess it's that whole hive-mind thing they got themselves goin' on there. It's kind of neato. An individual ant is the equivalent of single neuron in a human brain—pretty useless all by its lonesome. But get enough ants together and they develop the kind of collective intelligence capable of constructing the kind of underground colonies that would make a team of engineers envious. So yeah, that shit is cool.
But what of the actual doc? Eh, it's ok I guess. I'm not sure how the narration style was decided on, but it would seem that director Michael Watchulonis, after visiting Disney's Hall of Presidents, thought, "I really like what they got going on here, I just wish it wasn't so lifelike." Aside from that: run-of-the-mill nature doc stuff. If you like being creeped out, if you find ants fascinating, check it out.
Dave's Rating:
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