Two movies into February's Attack of the Vertically Challenged and we've got an interesting development: our short villains are creations of far taller beings. It's not the little children or wasps that are evil: it's the people directing them.
Quick Plot: Welcome to the Anan Archipelago, a region sparsely populated with humans but loaded with unusual insects. Local Joji collects some to sell to some scientists (while also having beach sex with his white mistress Annabelle as his new wife Yukari defends him to her handsy boss). Above them, an American aircraft spins out of control as four parachutes descend.
That's only the start of their problems. Charly, an American bomber pilot, had a bug-induced panic attack onboard and is the cause of the crash. Once on firm ground, Charley becomes even more manic as he spots more swarms and his two compatriots hide out in a cave. The pair is found dead the next morning, while Charly is unconscious and in bad shape.
As American military authorities come to investigate, Joji finds himself under suspicion. His biologist pal Dr. Nagumo shows up to help, bringing terrifying news of just how deadly the insects of Anan truly are. These aren't your annoying picnic mosquitoes but harbingers of the end of the world. They can lay eggs in humans to turn them mad. It's a bad way to go, and exactly why Annabelle, a survivor of a concentration camp who witnessed humanity at its worst, wants to unleash them.
I sadly don't have enough experiece with Japanese genre cinema of the 1960s to really know how Genocide fits in there. Directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu, the film plays rather shockingly bleak to a 2025 viewer, which is perfectly understandable. The scars of Hiroshima were just over 20 years old and far from healing.
Nihonmatsu, working with a script by Susumu Takaku, isn't afraid to present a flawed set of characters to bring about a possible apocalypse. Joji makes a lot of mistakes before he truly understands what he's put at risk, while Annabelle's fury is horrific but also kind of justified. There's something modern and smart about how the characters of Genocide are living in a hell that they and their kind have built.
High Points
That is one appropriately big and dark (or maybe hopeful?) ending
Low Points
It's not that the insect world is working off a rulebook, but it does feel a bit silly for swarms to only attack a character (and leave another bite-free) when the script seems to need them to
Lessons Learned
Insects never lie
The best way to jog a psychotic patient's memory is to expose him to closeups of the thing he fears most
Tattoos only appear in the moonlight, and never on a sunny afternoon when you're wearing a bikini on the beach
Rent/Bury/Buy
Despite what you might guess from its cheery title, Genocide is far from a fun watch. There's a deep weight to this killer wasp movie. If you're up for it, find it on the Criterion Channel.
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