KING OF THE ANTS (2004) *

Before The Asylum got into the mockbuster business, they teamed up with horror legend Stuart (Re-Animator) Gordon for this weird neo-noir/torture porn/horror hybrid.  Chris McKenna stars as Sean, a painter who gets suckered by a rich contractor named Ray (Daniel Baldwin) to tail a suit down at city hall who’s causing problems for his business.  Things escalate quickly when Sean murders his target, which forces Ray to take matters in his own hands. 

King of the Ants starts out OK as things sort of play out like a modern riff on an old film noir.  The plot takes a turn though once the hero is captured and tortured by Baldwin and his cronies.  These sequences go on for far too long and are pretty repugnant.  Things get increasingly weird once he starts having bizarre hallucinations of Kari Wuhrer with a penis.  (I don’t know if this was supposed to be a homage to The Crying Game or not.)  Later, she appears to him as a grotesque shit-eating caterpillar that looks like a close cousin to Justin Long in Tusk.  What the fuck?  All of this is more unpleasant than scary and is sure no picnic to sit through. 

The third act is slightly better, although the fact that McKenna could get the wife of the man he killed to not only nurse him back to health, but make her fall in love with him too, is a little hard to swallow.  The finale where McKenna gets revenge on Baldwin and his crew also goes on too long.  In fact, the movie is too long in general, running one-hundred-and-two minutes, and feeling twice that length.

The cast is stacked top to bottom with talent.  Baldwin is ideally cast as the villain, and Vernon Wells and George Wendt (who looks like he’s having fun) make for a strange team as his sleazy crew.  Wuhrer (who made this just before she did all those Dimension DTV sequels) probably gives the best performance in the movie, but some of the stuff she’s asked to do is almost laughable.  The biggest surprise is seeing an uncredited Ron Livingston as her ill-fated husband, although he’s not given much to do besides die. 

The supporting cast is so good that they just make McKenna pale in comparison.  He just isn’t in the same league as his co-stars and is pretty annoying throughout the picture (but especially in the final act).  I can’t say the movie would’ve worked with a stronger leading man because it’s certainly repellent to the core, but he doesn’t do it any favors.

If King of the Ants was more of a straight noir thriller, it possibly could’ve been more tolerable.  However, the horror touches only make the whole ordeal more perplexing.  Since it’s neither fish nor fowl, I’m not sure if die-hard Gordon fans will even enjoy it.  It’s not quite as bad as Gordon’s Dagon, but it’s pretty awful in just about every way.

Gordon’s next was Edmond, a much better non-horror-but-still-sorta-horrific drama.