Bug; you love them or hate them, or maybe even have a mild curiosity about them (though from a distance) but they are always around us. Insects have always been a subject of horror films in some way, and even science fiction such as the onslaught of giant bug attacking humanity in the 50’s drive-in classics. Bugs happens to be the name of the game for Lucky McKee with his entry into the Masters of Horror anthology series, but can the newcomer come close to rivaling or even surpassing the long time masters of horror that are more or less the lifeblood of the series?

McKee’s short, Sick Girl, finds an entomologist, Ida Teeter (Angela Bettis) dealing with problems that an exterminator can’t handle. To begin with, she’s been having relationship problems, and not with men either. It seems that the women she is attracted to just can’t handle her pet which happen to be a vast assortment of exotic bugs. But then she meets Misty Falls (Erin Brown) and the two hit it off rather well, and in fact, Misty isn’t “bugged” by her pets at all since her father used to be an entomology professor, though he’s recently left for somewhere in South America.

Ida also has recently been shipped an aggressive insect, but before she can find out more about it, it gets loose and is now wandering somewhere in her apartment . . . or maybe in the building. It hasn’t gone too far however, and Ida is about to discover the horrible truth about the insect, who sent it, and its terrible breeding habits.

Sick Girl tries to get under your skin and literally bug you, but it honestly falls very, very short of accomplishing that. The film starts off with a rather bad approach in the acting alone, and it just slowly gets worse. I couldn’t handle the neurotic and rather overacted method that Angela Bettis played Ida, and it seems rather forced at times, and listening to her through the entire film is nothing short of annoying. Maybe this is the way that the character was supposed to be, but it just doesn’t work, and while I do understand the fact that the film is more or less dealing with the outcasts of society, it’s just not something that works for the film. Erin Brown, better known to many as Misty Mundane, is equally obnoxious and save for a few moments of good acting, she really falls into the same category as Bettis. The only real talent comes from Jesse Hlubik in the role of Max Grubb, Ida’s co-worker, and Lana Beasley, the landlady who doesn’t approve of alternative lifestyle, but they really aren’t seen as often as our two starts.

The mysterious package really isn’t that much of a mystery when the clues are thrown right in from of you, and when Ida receives a letter from someone in Brazil, it all becomes too apparent who sent it. Hey, didn’t Misty just say a while back her father quit teaching and went to South America? Isn’t Brazil also in South America? Zoinks . . . I don’t think we’ve got much of a mystery on our hands, gang. And just wait until you see the occasional glimpses of the poorly designed and animated insect on the loose. It’s laughable at best.

We soon learn that the insect has a nasty habit of attacking other creatures and then impregnating them with its young, much like you may have seen on Animal Planet or Discovery Channel, but it gets worse (at least it’s supposed to.) The insect also sucks the blood of its victims, replacing them with a secretion of its own that results in mutation. I believe that I saw something similar in The Fly . . . and about fifty other horror and science fiction films. McKee admits himself that the film is similar to The Fly, and I suppose that it’s ultimately a bad situation. Admit it, you get picked on by reviewers, don’t mention it and you’ll get the same treatment. Sick Girl ultimately comes down to being nothing more than a poorly crafted film that borrows too heavily the past instead of trying to bring about some originality.

Fans of McKee won’t be swayed by my opinion however, and I know that he gained a following thanks to his film May, and if you’re a part of that brood, there are a number of special features for Sick Girl that might interest you. The feature includes and additional commentary track featuring McKee as well as Angela Battis, Jesse Hlubik and composer Jaye Baines Luckett, though for me, I was fine watching the film once, not again with the commentary. There are interviews with Battis, McKee, Erin Brown and Brad MacDonald, the films insect wrangler. Sick Girl also includes a behind the scenes making of feature, a bio, and DVD-ROM features. While I have loved the fact that the Masters of Horror releases are including a ton of extra features, this is one film that even these tidbits of information and behind the scenes looks don’t really improve my opinion.

In case you’re curious, McKee really only got this gig because Roger Corman had to pull out of the project, and having directed a handful of titles, I wouldn’t consider McKee to be a “master of horror” at all. I’ve reviewed more horror films that he’s directed . . . so doesn’t that technically make me a master of horror and if so, where’s my directing shot? Sick Girl does manage to accomplish one thing, and true to the content of the movie, by the time the credits rolled, the film did nothing more that bug me.

-mike-