Night of the Insolent Vermin is a comedy horror film that was written, shot, edited and directed by Gary Dejidas. I'm not entirely sure if it was due to the screener I was sent, or if it was intentional, but there were substantial parts of this that were entirely in Spanish, and with no subtitles I was clueless as to what was being said. Even if there had been subtitles for those parts however, I really didn't like the way this story was presented.
Sara (Kayla Strada) and her group of girl friends, as well as a non-English speaking woman (Sharibel Monegro as Rosalita) they rescue from two men harassing her, have decided to hunker down together at Sara's house due to a super hurricane hitting the area. For some unexplained reason, the storm has somehow caused the local cockroach population to become aggressive. With martial law declared, the girls decide it is up to them to solve the cockroach problem and save Orlando.
While this is billed as a comedy horror, it is a horror film where that all takes place exclusively off screen. The entire movie that is shown takes place within Sara's house, with the many times characters go outside not really ever shown. The implication that the cockroaches have mutated into deadly killer ones is never explained that well, nor is the fact that (I think), the storm has also turned people into aggressive psychos. This leads to a huge disconnect between me watching this and the characters actions in the film. They keep stating they need to 'save Orlando', yet it never felt remotely that there was any problem for them to save it from. By the time in the third act they are excitedly murdering seemingly near defenceless people without a care in the world I was totally lost, unable to not only understand their motivations, nor understand how an apparently normal group of friends are able to do what they do completely guilt free. Even when one of their number is killed off, the girls show zero reaction to it, other than to attempt some comedy through a couple of scenes of them moving the body.
At one point the friends tune into a Spanish language radio station in which a woman is constantly updating the state on the situation in Orlando. Trouble was, this not being subtitled meant I had no idea what the lady was saying. At first I thought this may have been intentional, an attempt at comedy by having the only person with the answers speaking in a language most of them couldn't understand. This woman is returned to over and over again however, speaking in Spanish for minutes at a time, so I began to feel that maybe there should have been subtitles that I had inadvertently missed out on
Almost straight away I could tell the comedy wouldn't be to my liking. The whole intro credit sequence is made up of interviews with people about how 'crazy' the film's title was. This was something that believed itself to much more funny than it was. There wasn't a single moment of humour here that remotely hit for me. It again didn't help the stakes were so low, at least from the viewer's perspective. There are cockroaches in the movie, but only one ever shown at once, quite possibly the exact same one used each time. At least it doesn't appear any of the creatures were actually harmed in the movie, despite the high number that are constantly being stamped on. There are some moments that call for special effects, and these featured a lot more blood than I had expected. Welcome, but not understanding the context of the characters actions it all felt a bit random.
The protagonists were all designed to be stereotypes, with each one getting introduced with a title card to explain what their personality is based around. Mayah (Jaydelise Volquez) for instance is introduced as the bad-ass, while Ida (Jennifer Utsey) is introduced as the geeky one. It was at least nice to see a female led film, and it was nice to see a mix of diverse characters.
Night of the Insolent Vermin wasn't for me. I think even if the scenes in Spanish had been translated this would still be lacking. Whether the scenes of horror and violence mostly all taking place off screen was intended to be amusing, or down to budget constraints I don't know, but it caused a huge disconnect with the protagonists wildly excessive criminal actions that just made it too hard to root for them. Night of the Insolent Vermin is now available on Blu-ray from Bayview Entertainment.
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