Don't bother with this one if you're after a monster movie: the creature rampage doesn't start until nine and a half minutes from the end, including the credits. And it's not that spectacular when it does finally arrive. For all its faults, at least the Irwin Allen movie of the same name delivered on the carnage and chaos: this restrained French non-horror localises its swarm damage to a handful of people in an isolated rural environment.
Most of the time The Swarm (La Nuée) is actually a very ordinary and non-horrific French drama about a young widow trying to support her two children by running a small locust farm: breeding the insects before grinding them down to make animal feed. The resultant product is of variable quality, and she can't get a good price for it - until by chance she discovers a significant improvement if the locusts' diet is supplemented with blood: fresh or bottled, human or animal. At this point you'd start wondering just how far she's prepared to go to preserve her secret and maintain the quality of her product, but disappointingly the answer is "not very far".
Eventually we do get a tiny bit of swarming locust action, and impressive close-up shots of locusts are dropped in throughout. But the film finally livening up in the final quarter of the final reel doesn't really fit in with the previous hour and a half of awkward domestics as a Quiet But Serious Drama. Sure, it's perfectly well done, but it's seemingly designed to underwhelm, unless the family tensions stuff is what you want, in which case all the entomophobia material is surplus to requirements.
**
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