Woodyanders
A convicted killer gets exposed to an experimental serum that causes him to mutate into a lethal and predatory humanoid mosquito mutant that goes on a bloodthirsty rampage. Director Tibor Takacs keeps the entertainingly inane story moving along at a brisk place, stages the attack scenes with flair, delivers a few nice bits of gore, and, best of all, treats the gloriously ludicrous premise with jaw-dropping seriousness. Corin Nemec plays the rugged detective hero with admirable sincerity. The foxy Musetta Vander likewise does well as the infected Dr. Jennifer Allen. While the cheap and chintzy (not so) special CGI effects leave something to be desired, the funky guy-in-a-rubber-suit monster possess a certain gnarly old school practical appeal. Kudos are also in order for Emil Topuzov's slick cinematography and the rousing score by Joseph Conlan and Sophie Morizet. A fun little Grade B beast bash.
Wizard-8
Director Tibor Takács has had a very inconsistent career. He has directed some good movies ("The Gate", "I, Madman", and "Sabotage"), but he has also made some real stinkers ("Lies And Illusions", "The Gate 2", and "The Black Hole". Unfortunately, "Mansquito" falls into the latter category. Not everything about it is awful - for a production that was reportedly made for just $5 million, it looks very nice. The cinematography is good, the movie manages to disguise the Bulgarian locations as American, and the creature of the movie uses a pretty impressive looking rubber suit instead of CGI. However, as good looking as the movie is, it doesn't prevent the movie from becoming a big bore. The first half of the movie doesn't emphasize the monster that much, instead focusing more on the boring human characters and their boring dialogue. And when the movie does start showcasing the monster more in the second half, it comes across as very tiresome and nothing we haven't seen before. The movie seems inspired by 1950s monster movies, but this update simply forgets to keep the "fun" factor those old movies often had.
mrush
So I've pretty much gave up on believing the DVD boxes at the rental store,especially the horror ones.They promise scares and terror and end up leaving you feeling mad and ripped off.But the box for this one didn't even promise much.I guess with a name like "Mosquito Man" there ain't no use in pretending you're gonna be good.But I didn't care about the read on the box.I thought maybe we would go old school,back to the 80's in horror,when all the rage was some big cool looking monster,like Rawhead Rex or Pumpkinhead.OK,first off this movie is nothing but a blatant rip-off of "The Fly" but without the cool gore or anything else that made "The Fly" at least watchable.When an experiment to save the world from some mosquito carried virus goes wrong a guy is mutated into a giant mosquito.Really.So he kills people by sucking them dry of blood .A cop decides that the dead bodies turning up around town aren't being killed by your average wacko and the cop is determined to find what is killing all these folks.The acting is bad.The plot is worse.Some of the special effects were decent.But the Mosquito itself looked really cheesy at times,actually all the time, but sometimes it looked worse than others.Stupid ,plodding and nothing cool here at all.The only saving grace was that it was a fairly short movie.No nudity and very little cursing for some reason.The most cursing was from me, I suppose, at having been disappointed again by yet another cruddy horror movie.Don't rent this mess.Even if you could see it for free it would still be a rip-off.
Phillemos
"Mansquito" is a SciFi Channel Original derived from some of the old '50s giant insect movies, but given a 21st century makeover. As far as SciFi Originals go, it's not bad (relatively speaking, of course). But it's kind of silly that the escaped convict morphs into a giant mosquito in about 90 seconds, yet it takes the lady scientist about a half-hour to make the same transformation. From a purely selfish standpoint, the convict's ex-girlfriend (whom he kills right after his metamorphosis) would have made a much better-looking heroine than the scientist, too. And it's a little odd that the Mansquito spouts tiny wings about halfway through the movie, and the wings are somehow powerful enough to allow him to fly like a champ. But the movie has some good action scenes and gore, and it's certainly better than previous killer-mosquito movies "Skeeter" and "Mosquito." Overall, neither a great movie nor a "so-bad-it's-good" movie, but if you have nothing better to do...
AD
