(Let's start the New Year with a New Year horror movie!)
The Millennium Bug (2011)Rating: ***
Starring:John Charles Meyer, Jessica Postrozny, Christine Haeberman
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The story starts a few hours before the year 2000, a time where more impressionable people feared the possible apocalyptic breakdown of society that'll be the cause of a computer bug called Y2K. Hoping to escape this nonsense as well as spend some quality time together, the Haskin family – teen daughter Clarissa, her father Byron, and her new (young) stepmother Joany – drives to the mountains of Sierra Diablos for a late night camping trip.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXuX2PTjw3rnAqLLR_QPxGXFl7MatmIQQhjcUbiaJzogigAbThmwIMFIo1uT1cdBGIzWkk0fYymm5OoPMS_OOJf9LrNDYBe_AdztlqqyZTnWi0Rzx7BIxRXk74vU779-Im15LwntnztOY/s400/The+Millennium+Bug+%25282011%2529_xvid.avi_000904355.jpg)
A debut feature for director Kenneth Cran and the "aptly" named company No CGI Films, The Millennium Bug can be described as a melting pot of backwoods hicksploitation horror and atomic age creature flick, done in a way harking back to classic Japanese kaiju "suitmation", meaning lots of miniature sets, hokey camera perspectives, and a menacing monster suit. This itself should say a lot about this film being cheesy and crazy as heck and you're definitely right on that department, but that's the big charm of The Millennium Bug. (no pun intended...or is there?) It captures the bygone days of midnight monster features and 70s style drive-in exploitation to a tee, and while its wildly zany direction, crazy dialogue and insane tone offer little time for our protagonists to properly develop and may as well made our human villains too loopy to be considered threatening, if not scary altogether, it does make up for the movie's moderate budget and befits the loony story, bringing out B-grade campiness that can definitely satisfy, if not fairly entertain fans of good "bad horror flicks".
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On that note, true to the movie's "no CG" claim, most of the gore and special effects are done practically, from vicious shotgun murders to giant prehistoric larvae attack. While I find some editing done to "enhance" these effects slightly questionable (I think I heard a cartoonish "squish" sound when one of the victims got analed by a tendril. And then there's the obvious blue screen effects), I am still impressed by the work done for the Millennium Bug's rampage, as well as the monster's very design and mysterious mythos, considering its scale and the budget. In fact, I can tell most of the movie was shot around man-made sets and it undoubtedly has that Evil Dead II vibe to it all, much to my nostalgic enjoyment and amazement with what big imagination can do to something so little.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCxBbO0p4kHy5k-4_s882O-Inn2ckw_Z0pNOEX0mBle_toGd-YP7FboQ70sDa_NGBbr2bg_GJsED3UBCLpG2A9CpJqb4MpkrbBgXGJj02uXol_C7Uv6foQBb2jFR6Kc4tuUcFWp1pDr6E/s400/The+Millennium+Bug+%25282011%2529_xvid.avi_002406539.jpg)
Bodycount:
1 male devoured by monster
1 baby shot
1 male found stabbed in the eye with a bone
1 female gets a thrown axe to the face
1 male shot through the head with a shotgun
1 male devoured by monster
1 male stabbed to death with a wooden dildo
1 male impaled by a monster's tendril
1 male devoured by monster
1 male devoured by monster
1 female mangled by monster, decimated by dynamite
1 monster had half of its face blown off by dynamite
1 female found being eaten alive by monster larvas
1 female attacked by monster larvas, presumably killed
Total: 14
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