Movie Review: King of the Ants (2003)

Stuart Gordon is one of the most innovative movie makers on the current cinema scene. He is best known for his horror movies. His flicks are generally high in imagination, but light on budget, so they have received far less attention than lower grade movies with bigger budgets and with less thought put into their production. Lately, Gordon has also been branching out into non-supernatural horror movies with the 2003 flick King of the Ants.

King of the Ants is about how an innocent young man drifts into a life of crime and violence. Sean Crawley (Chris McKenna) is a painter who is recruited by an electrician named Duke (George Wendt) who works for a corrupt contractor. Specifically, Crawley is to follow an accountant at City Hall who has been investigating the contractor and report on the accountant's activities.

Crawley is able to follow the guy around and take photographs of him without being detected. Crawley is a success as a spy so much so that the contractor decides to up the ante. The contractor hires Crawley to kill the accountant to the tune of $13,000.

For his kill job, Crawley devises a disguise that effectively ensures that no eyewitnesses will be able to provide an ample description to police, yet common enough so that his appearance in the neighborhood will not attract suspicion. He is able to persuade the accountant to let him in the house on a day when the wife and daughter are out and then proceed to do the dirty deed. He does so in a way that ensures that no fingerprints, blood or any other means of forensic identification are left behind. In other words, novice killer Crawley is a success in the business of murder.

However, there is a catch. Now that the accountant is dead, the contractor and his gang refuse to pay Crawley and demand that he skip town. When Crawley threatens to go to the cops, they kidnap him and take him to their secret desert lair. There, they subject him to daily torture aimed at eventually turning him into a mental retardee so that they can release him without running any risk of being brought to justice. The gang's course of action leads to an unpredictable series of events that cover the rest of the movie. King of the Ants is a pretty good flick due to the unpredictability.

The actor who plays Crawley projects a naivete that adds credibility to his role. The direction in this flick is nothing short of superb. The makeup in this movie is excellent considering the film's low budget. Another plus for the film is that all four members of the gang are well fleshed out characters. However, there are a few plot holes that undermine it. Add it all up for a good movie that could have been really great.