George Mendeluk

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2021) Imitation is the sincerest form of commercial exploitation, and so ants-on-a-plane thriller Destination: Infestation follows Snakes on a Plane by a year. But there’s a world of difference between the energetic and intentionally campy Samuel L. Jackson thriller and this lower-budgeted, often dour affair. Clearly made to order for schlock distribution (it was a Lifetime premiere!), it’s not a film that deals in subtleties. There’s a plane, there are ants, and so there are ants on a plane. The setup presents the various characters that will deal (or not) with the threat, and the action gets going once a nest of ants explodes from within a man feeling sick. These ants are supercharged fictional nasties, able to kill with toxins and gnaw their way through airplane cabling. Against them is a team made up of an entomologist and a sky marshal simultaneously fighting ants and falling in love. To cover the remaining bases of any cheap thriller, there’s a ticking-clock aspect to the plane being consumed mid-flight, and a human villain flat-out refusing to allow the ant-infested plane back on US soil. It’s all incredibly familiar. You can certainly watch the result, but there’s very little here from director George Mendeluk to make it seem interesting. Ants don’t make for very charismatic antagonists, and the human characters aren’t necessarily any better. The absence of any spark of self-aware wit or humour does not help in the slightest. I still have good memories of Snakes on a Plane, but all Ants on a Plane manages is to make them even fonder in comparison.