You’d think a movie about blood-sucking locusts would be a fun (or insufferable) B movie. But, no, leave it to the French to give us a story about a struggling small business owner with family drama who is trying her level best to make a business work. Who wouldn’t want to raise and sell locusts as high-protein food source? And if those locusts happen to thrive on human blood, that’s just a complication towards a successful family business.

I’d argue 90% of this movie is metaphor. The small-business owner literally gives her blood, sweat, and tears – but mostly her blood – to make this business work. Her kids don’t appreciate the hustle and are pretty annoying and pretty annoyed at all the locusts. But Mom is going to make this work, come hell or high water or killer bugs.

You’d think a movie called The Swarm would be about those African killer bees like in the 70s movie with the same name… or, if we want to get all modern, murder hornets from Asia. But no, this isn’t a B grade monster movie with swarming locusts eating a town, a high school, or even a day care. Hell, the movie was getting aggressively close to its run-time before the swarm, you know, swarmed. But they do swarm and it actually becomes a pretty effective and bloody horror movie when it happens. You just have to be aware that this isn’t what the movie’s about.

What it’s mostly about though makes for some pretty decent – if a little slow – drama. Both as a study on a struggling small-business as well as a single mother dealing with her kids. Yes there’s a threat of those locusts escaping and trying to find them a steady source of food can be a struggle. But before you can say “feed me Seymour”, we do get some horror that approximates maybe why we picked this to watch on Netflix in the first place.

So, yeah, maybe watch this one if you want something you likely haven’t seen before. A metaphorical and actual tale of small business travails with a little man-vs-nature sprinkled in. It’s not bad… as long as you adjust your expectations.

Score: 76