Monster Bugs and Monster Monsters

Upcoming camptacular movies like Monster-Zilla and Bugs 3D are like prepackaged snacks: cheap, momentarily satisfying and very cheesy. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. If you walk around being smart and brain-like all day long, it’s nice to park your particulate matter every once in a while and just live in the moment.

So in the immortal words of Sir Clint Eastwood, “Was I in focus? Then let’s move on”…

In Monster-Zilla, easily the worst if not laziest titled movie of the year, “two Navy SEALS are sent to an abandoned island in search of a “package,” but instead of being the hunters, they find they are being hunted by a creature that’s big and hungry.” I guess the island isn’t quite abandoned after all.

Bugs 3D, with no more effort put into its title as well, is a little more promising: “In the near future, due to huge demand for protein, synthetic protein is rapidly developed around the world. A fanatic geneticist has managed to raise super bugs that can provide high-quality protein at low-cost. But the bugs break out, devour scientists, and turn into giant monsters. Numerous monster bugs hankering after flesh and blood swarm into the sea and wait to rage a holocaust.”

They’re not far off on that whole “bugs providing protein” thing; watch Snowpiercer (2013) and tell me you’ll continue eating protein bars. Sure, the package lists the ingredients as grains, fiber and chocolate chips. But according to the future, it’s all ground up dung beetles mixed with flavor.

That should bother me, but it doesn’t. I’ve probably eaten worse.