IR Film Review: THE SWARM [Netflix]

The idea of survival and understanding the growth of success that turns into obsession can work in the financial sector but can sometimes drift into the natural world. In "The Swarm", hailing from France, and which was selected for Critic's Week for Cannes 2020 before the festival was postponed, there is a sense of loss and longing in the character of Valerie (played Suliane Brahim) who is growing locusts to create flour. But like anything...too much becomes overwhelming. Through fate and a little bit of chemistry, Valerie's locusts start to evolvve and do what they have been biblically known to do which is destroy everything. She finds that they have a taste for flesh and blood. The descent of course starts to run its path with expected bad decisions. Marie Carbonne plays her daughter Laura who already had to deal with her peers at school making fun of her because her mother raises locusts and is eccentric. It seems her father died under odd circumstances and he was obsessed with goats on their farm.

It actually sounds more weird than it actually plays. Her younger brother floats in and out of the story. He seems fascinated by the bugs but doesn't see them as dangerous. "The Swarm" is more like a family drama with a low key performance in Brahim that is reminiscent of a Sally Hawkins approach. Brahim is no where near emotive as Hawkins though and it is hard to feel empathy for her after one point. She sacrifices something in a way off screen where the cruelty it infers (and that can be heard) is just very hard for a character to come back from. Even as the film moves to a crescendo and Valerie herself starts to fall prey, it is hard to get behind her choices, again because her character did something so blatant earlier. As the film climaxes, the expected happens but the result again feels anti-climactic and not impactful. In addition, the nature of the beast is almost more limited and less scaled than one would think. "The Swarm" simply suffers not from a bad idea but a less than empathetic main character who is flawed and, in a way, unredeemable. C

By Tim Wassberg