Okay, so with a title like Tsunambee, you’d expect an over-the-top B-movie with bad acting and even worse CGI, right? Well, yeah, and that’s definitely what you get, but Tsunambee has the added distinction of taking itself waaay too seriously, especially considering the subject matter. It’s about a horde of cat-sized bees (well, they’re wasps, mostly) that attack people and occasionally turn them into bee zombies (zom-bees?). I mean, Sharknado knows what kind of movie it is and so it keeps the tone tongue-in-cheek. But Tsunambee? This thing is pretty fucking dark. I mean, it starts out with a black guy getting gunned down by a cop, seemingly for no reason. And this is before we get to the angry swarm of bees.
Or maybe I should say apocalyptic bees? Because this thing is dripping with a dreary message about faith and Christianity and, you know, God is good, so here’s some bad clip art CGI bees to illustrate the point. Needless to say, a religious message in a bad B-movie was definitely not what I was expecting.
What I was expecting, and what I definitely got, was a terrible script, terrible dialogue, directing choices that make no sense, and absolutely atrocious acting. These are things that any sane person wants to see in a movie with a title like Tsunambee. I want absurdity, whether intentional or not. I want silliness, over-acting, terrible special FX. In short, I wanted a good bad movie.
Tsunambee could have been a hell of a lot of fun if director Milko Davis realized what kind of movie he was making. Had he ditched the stupid Christian symbolism (sometimes the characters literally preach to each other), and made the thing more lighthearted, then he’d have the makings of a very good bad movie. The CGI bees look like they were made on a PC from the 90’s, people who are stung get turned into zom-bees, and we sometimes even see things from the wasps’ point-of-view in a kind of diarrhea yellow. Also, the sheriff’s name is Feargo. Feargo.
And, oh my, the dialogue is so wonderfully terrible. How are they going to deal with these things? “Pray. Pray hard.” How does one pray hard? Shit, you got me. Also, when Feargo and a group of survivors are holed up in an old farmhouse, she laments that she’s never had to deal with a case like this. “Not one matches this one,” she says. “Not one.” You mean you’ve never come up against a hoard of apocalyptic insects before? I’d always thought this was a common problem for law enforcement. Certainly it is here in Frederick, Maryland. Also, yeah, maybe not the best strategy to shoot these things, eh? Sure, they’re as big as newborn babies, but there’s thousands of them, and you only have a certain amount of bullets. Just saying.
Man, though, the worst thing you can do with this type of movie is to force some silly message into it. I’m sure a lot of people who were willing to give this thing a chance, thinking they knew the kind of movie they were getting into. But then the filmmakers try to get us to come to Jesus. Nah, man. That’s not how it works.
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