While everyone’s busy thinking about a high profile threat of infection, an unexpected aggressor raises its ugly head in Pakphum Wongjinda and Chalit Krileadmongkon’s insectile horror Creepy Crawly (๑๐๐ ร้อยขา). Centipedes in themselves are little creepy given the undulating motion of their many legs and tendency to crawl out from places where you’d least expect them, but this particular bug seems to have undergone a mammoth evolution to become a bloodsucking parasite capable of threatening the human race!
The film opens with a naive vlogger getting lost in the Thai countryside and deciding to pitch a tent in the middle of nowhere while unable to locate her campsite despite having encountered an elderly person bleeding profusely from the mouth whom she does nothing to help. During the night she’s bothered by giant centipedes and then has some kind of altercation with the elderly person. Some months later, an emergency order has been placed on the country due to the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic. Another YouTuber, Fame, who is well known for uploading videos criticising hotel accommodation, arrives at a hotel which has been turned into a quarantine facility along with her brother, Fiew, and a family of three, adult Taekwondo champion Leo, his naive sister Lena, and their father who is deaf.
Obviously, the centipede, which is later described as a Tablongplum which can possess a human body and feast on its blood, has somehow made its way to the hotel and is particularly interested in Fame because she suffers from a rare disease which means that her blood would enable the Tablongplum to live a very long life. However, the bugs aren’t the only threat in the hotel even if they’re first discovered by the only remaining maid, Pond, feasting on a dead rat in a vacant room. The sleazy manager, Wit, is paranoid about the fortunes of his hotel during the pandemic considering it has already been dealt a reputational blow after being identified as the source of a covid cluster. It’s implied that he’s only got permission to re-open as a quarantine facility thanks to a dodgy deal with an important person who has also turned up, ironically belittling Wit for wearing a mask while describing covid as a “just a cold”, for a completely free and very discreet overnight stay with his mistress.
Those are just a few of the reasons that Wit refuses to listen when Fame and Leo discover a body at the end of a blood trail, accusing them of being in cahoots doing a bit for the YouTube channel to further discredit his hotel which even on the surface of things seems not to be particularly well run. With the hotel technically in lockdown and patrolled by an armed guard, the tension begins to increase once it’s realised that the Tablongplum can possess and take on the form of any of the guests meaning no one can trusted and the bug could be anywhere. Somewhat improbably, not only is it able to fully understand human language even independent of its human hosts but also seems to have some knowledge of culture and is aware of how various things work rather than just being a giant blood sucking parasite apparently able to control vast armies of much smaller but admittedly nasty bugs especially when they appear in large numbers.
The solution seems to be “kill it with fire”, though just the pandemic the bugs prove hard to stamp out with the infection seemingly continuing even after the big bad is supposedly eliminated as the centipedes continue to dominate human society. The film seems to be making a minor point about silly YouTubers who endanger themselves or thoughtlessly ruin the lives of others for clicks while also laying the blame on sleazy managers like Wit along with the political corruption that enables a health hazard to continue long after it should. Meanwhile, tiny bugs eat away at the surface, undermining the foundations as they go. Seeing an entire hotel covered in horrible insects is undoubtedly creepy though perhaps there was something rotten there all along. In any case, it seems there’s no escape from nature’s revenge or its bloodsucking tendrils.
Creepy Crawly is released in the US on Digital, blu-ray, and DVD on Oct. 3 courtesy of Well Go USA.
International trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 