Welcome to Fly Creek, Where the Ground Bites Back
If The Birds made you side-eye pigeons, Squirm will have you staring at your garden soil like it’s plotting your murder. Writer-director Jeff Lieberman takes a simple “nature gone bad” premise and wriggles it into something both absurd and unnervingly effective: what if a lightning storm turned millions of earthworms into aggressive, flesh-chewing maniacs? The result is a sticky, squirm-inducing slice of Southern Gothic horror with a streak of dark humor that feels like Deliverance—but with more protein.
From New York Slick to Georgia Hick
Don Scardino plays Mick, a New Yorker who visits his girlfriend Geri (Patricia Pearcy) in the tiny town of Fly Creek, Georgia, and quickly learns that rural life comes with its own set of problems—chiefly, electrified annelids with a taste for human flesh. Scardino’s fish-out-of-water charm works well against Pearcy’s sunny small-town warmth. Their chemistry gives the story some grounding, even as the plot gleefully descends into pure drive-in madness.
The Worms are the Real Stars (and Divas)
Millions of worms—both local Georgia specimens and truckloads flown in from Maine—were wrangled for this production. And yes, they steal the show. When they swarm, they don’t just slither; they cascade, covering floors, walls, and unfortunate cast members in pulsating waves. There’s something deeply unsettling about the way Lieberman shoots them—close enough to make you itch, far enough to leave your imagination filling in what you can’t quite see.
Rick Baker’s Early Creepshow
Before he was Hollywood’s monster maestro, makeup artist Rick Baker cut his prosthetic teeth here. The worm-eaten faces and writhing skin effects are grotesque in that wonderful low-budget ’70s way—sticky, nasty, and just fake enough to be fun instead of stomach-turning. Roger Grimes (R.A. Dow), the worm farmer’s awkward son, gets the film’s most memorable transformation, his face becoming a squirming buffet line for the film’s slimy co-stars.
Sheriff Reston: The Roscoe P. Coltrane of Horror
Peter MacLean’s Sheriff Reston is a perfect horror-movie foil: smug, dismissive, and absolutely useless in the face of an obvious crisis. His refusal to believe Mick’s warnings isn’t just frustrating—it’s a key part of the film’s fun, because you know the worms are saving a special fate just for him. And oh, do they deliver.
Down-Home Doom
The third act turns into a Southern-fried siege film, with Mick, Geri, and the Sanders family trapped as worms pour into their house like living quicksand. The sound design—wet squelches, slurps, and faint, unsettling rustles—makes you feel like the entire town is being swallowed alive from the ground up. When dawn finally comes, and the worms retreat, you’re almost disappointed it’s over… almost.
Final Verdict: Creepy, Campy, and Crawling with Charm
Squirm isn’t subtle, and it doesn’t try to be. It’s part creature feature, part black comedy, and part endurance test for anyone with a phobia of things that wiggle. With a mix of genuine suspense, surprisingly good effects for its budget, and a willingness to go full-bore into the ridiculous, it’s no wonder the film has wriggled its way into cult-classic territory.
If Jaws kept people out of the water, Squirm might just keep you off your lawn.
