There’s bad. There’s so-bad-it’s-good. And then there’s Mosquito—a film so creatively bankrupt it makes you nostalgic for the sweet, warm embrace of brain freeze. Released in 1994, Mosquito is the kind of movie that crawls out of a VHS bargain bin at a gas station somewhere between Nowhere and Regret, Michigan. It wants to be Them! for the Monster Energy generation. What it delivers is more like Plan 9 if it were directed by a guy who just got dumped by his girlfriend and took it out on the local insect population with a Super 8 and a six-pack of Milwaukee’s Best.
Let’s start with the plot. A meteor crashes to Earth, and mutant mosquitoes—presumably exposed to alien blood—grow to the size of small sedans. They then proceed to wreak havoc on a national park, sucking campers dry and flapping around like animatronic pterodactyls made from melted Tupperware. That’s it. That’s the story. The rest of the film is just a parade of sweaty nobodies yelling into the woods while trying to out-act a rubber bug with fishing line wings.
The acting? Oh, dear reader. This is not acting. This is a hostage situation on film. We’ve got Gunnar Hansen of Texas Chain Saw Massacre fame, presumably cast because someone mistakenly believed swinging a chainsaw once qualifies you for dialogue. He plays a grizzled ex-con with all the emotional range of a brick with sideburns. His job, apparently, is to yell, scowl, and wield a shotgun like it owes him money.
Then there’s Tim Lovelace, whose performance as the lead makes Keanu Reeves in Point Break look like Daniel Day-Lewis on a bender. His character is named Ray, which is fitting, because he has all the charisma and personality of a half-dead sunbeam. His delivery is so flat you could balance your beer on it during a tornado. Every time he opens his mouth, the mosquitoes look embarrassed to be in the same frame.
Rachel Loiselle plays Megan, the obligatory girlfriend/park ranger/plot anchor who exists solely to shriek, trip over tree roots, and remind the audience that bras are optional in the woods. There’s an actual moment where she outruns a mosquito the size of a glider. Not because she’s fast—just because the special effects budget couldn’t afford both her and the puppet in the same shot for more than three seconds.
Speaking of effects… the mosquitoes themselves look like taxidermied bats stuffed with glow sticks and PTSD. They jitter and jolt on screen with all the menace of a Chuck E. Cheese animatronic with a wiring issue. Close-ups show plastic fangs and bulging eyes that seem perpetually confused to be part of this mess. At one point, a mosquito crashes through a camper and spears a guy on its proboscis like a human shish kebab, then just kind of… stares. As if the puppet operator fell asleep mid-stab.
The film leans heavily into “practical effects,” which is a charitable way of saying “cardboard and duct tape.” Blood sprays like Kool-Aid under pressure. Corpses look like Halloween decorations salvaged from a flooded Spirit store. The mosquitoes’ flight scenes are achieved through what I can only assume was the director tying string to a plastic toy and swinging it around like a toddler high on Tang.
The writing? Forgettable. Every line sounds like it was scribbled on a napkin during a Denny’s graveyard shift. Characters yell things like “We’ve got to stop these things!” and “They sucked him dry!” with all the urgency of a wet sock sliding down a shower wall. The script was clearly less about narrative and more about finding excuses to show bugs explode and people scream.
And yet, in the deepest, darkest, most shameful part of my soul… I kind of loved watching it.
Mosquito is not a good movie. It’s barely a movie. It’s more like a filmed dare—something you’d inflict on friends after five beers and a loss in poker. But there’s a strange, infectious joy in how utterly, unapologetically dumb it is. It’s earnest. It believes in its giant mosquitoes. It commits to the bit, even when that bit involves a grown man being dragged through a tent by a mosquito the size of a lawn chair.
If you’re the kind of masochist who gets off on watching B-movies that feel like fever dreams from the backseat of a broken-down van, Mosquito might be for you. It has all the charm of a mosquito bite in the middle of your spine: irritating, unforgettable, and probably infected.
