- Directed by Jason Wulfson
- Written by Malcolm Kohll, Gordon Render
- Stars Scott Bairstow, Rachel Shelley, Warrick Grier, Patrick Shai
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgUUyzXeY68
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
What killed those people in the desert? When a team starts looking into it, they find out the hard way. It’s decently made all around, with the effects a mix of CGI and practical. The Horrorguys are split on their opinion, with Kevin enjoying it much more than Brian.
Synopsis
In the Namib Desert of Africa, a group of geologists look at something that might be a volcanic pipe. They track down the thing, a pressure dome in the sand that looks like a big hill. One of the men hacks at it with a hammer to break off a sample, and it’s hollow inside. Something inside grabs him and pulls him in.
In Vancouver, Dr. Zack Straker deals with an emergency as time runs out. He saves the day, so his boss sends him for an on-site analyst project. Next thing he knows, he’s in the middle of the desert in Africa. He ends up at the Eland Mining Company and talks to Mikki about what to do next. She searches his bags, and a couple of the men fight.
Zack, Mikki, Karl, and a few others climb into a truck to head to the site. Karl talks about rebels in the area, which is why they’re all armed. They drive for hours and hours, seeing nothing but rocks and sand. They quickly find the missing prospector’s truck and two bodies that are nothing but skeletons. They’ve only been dead for six or seven hours, but there’s almost nothing left. Clive and Paul are clearly dead, but Harvey is missing; he’s now a murder suspect. They find footprints and follow them.
Titus warns Zack about touching the various religious artifacts that are hanging around, and they look a lot like the medallion an old man gave him before they left. It looks like a giant ant head. They follow the prints and soon find Harvey’s skeleton. Karl is sure there’s a murderer out there, but Magda has orders to take the truck and deliver some fuel, so they keep “playing detective.”
That night, Zack goes outside and “surfs” down the sand dunes. His prototype scanner keeps beeping about something. Something watches Zack, and his scanner detects movement. He sees some kind of giant monster in front of him. He runs back to the truck, but no one believes him. Mikki notices that Harvey’s bones are gone.
Titus says it’s a Tokolosh, a type of bad-luck demon. Karl mocks him, and they argue. Titus says it’s the “Sandmother” who takes life from bones. Then, they find more footprints and start following them. They spot a thing at a distance that looks like… bigfoot. Karl shoots it, but it dissolves, leaving nothing but Harvey’s skeleton behind.
Karl casts aspersions on Titus, who warns him to lay off. Zack asks Titus what it is, and he tells a story about Esikhulu, a thing he’s run into before. Suddenly, the truck’s engine catches fire, so they’re stuck. Naturally, the radio is also out. They set up a beacon, and soon enough, an airplane flies over. It still may take a few days before a truck arrives.
They set up a tent and turn in. First, Kurt takes guard duty, and then it’s Titus’s turn. Zack’s scanner goes off again as something approaches in the dark. Kurt’s in his sleeping bag, but when Titus checks on him, he’s been eaten– by ants. The ants crawl up Titus’s arm and eat that, too. The swarm of ants approaches the truck, and they all shoot at it, but they don’t stop. Karl pours down gasoline, and the ants turn away.
We soon see that the creature is a swarm of ants that inhabit a human skeleton to give it structure. Karl shoots it again, and it breaks down again. Zack says, “There is a system here at work,” but he doesn’t know what it is.
Karl and Magda argue about whether to stay put or try to walk back to the lost prospector’s truck. Zack, Karl, and Mikki walk through the desert, trying to get back. Zack’s sensor says there’s a huge bunch of acid under the soil. “Ants have formic acid; they use it to kill their prey.”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a CGI sandstorm rushes them. They huddle together and get buried. Later, they all stand up when the storm is over, but Zack’s sensor has been destroyed. They walk on but have to stop when it gets too dark to see. Before long, the creature comes for a visit. It’s got Magda’s face, so it must have gotten the people they left behind.
In the morning, they figure out that they’re right over the hill from the truck they were looking for, and yes, the radio works. They find the tunnel that poor Harvey fell into in the opening sequence, and the three of them crawl inside. Could this be Esikhulu’s ant queen? “They just want the bones. It gives them structure, like a skeleton.” The creature needs a set of bones to go anywhere.
Johan, the jerk who got into a fight with Karl earlier, arrives and pulls a gun on Zack, Karl, and Mikki. Johan thinks the prospectors found diamonds, and the three killed them to steal them. Karl eventually overpowers the much-older Johan. Somehow, he also finds a bunch of nitroglycerin. They all come to the conclusion that the ant queen has moved to the old mine shaft to start a new colony, so they go down there to find her.
Zack, the computer guy, knows how to hot-wire a generator that blinks the lights on and off as they descend. They find the creature and follow it. There’s a lot of herky-jerky editing, and stuff happens. The monster grabs Karl and pulls him into a pit, along with the nitro. It explodes, and the mine starts to collapse. Zack finds the queen, a big orange brain. As the ants close in on them, Zack finally stabs the orange blob. They run out of the mine, which collapses behind them.
Zack and Mikki walk back to their truck, where they find Johan has been eaten. Zack says, “I think I could get into this fieldwork stuff.” Zack’s taxi to the airport arrives, and he loads a big crate into the back. Except it’s not Zack who’s leaving, it’s Mikki. Zack returns to camp to do whatever it was they brought him there to do.
We see inside the crate is an egg for another Ezikhulu.
Commentary
I’m still not even quite sure why Zack was sent to the desert; he really didn’t do anything or even seem to have a job. His very contrived scanner only seemed to work when the plot required it, and usually then, it was a few seconds too late.
It’s pretty low-budget, just a bunch of guys in a truck in the desert, but it works. They’re trying to do something different with this setting, and it’s well done in that regard. The ants are cgi, and the creature is a guy in a suit, but it works.
It’s awfully slow getting started, and even once people start dying, it feels really slow-paced. No, no, it’s beyond slow-paced; it’s just plain boring.