This movie appears to be tale of a lone ant freedom fighter, and his heroic struggle to free the hive from domination by an alien intelligence. Or at least, that's the closest to a coherent narrative I'm able to form out of the film I just watched. It seems like the writer (there's only one credited, and he's Oscar nominated, if you can believe it) couldn't work out what story he wanted to tell. We get straight up 'SWARM!' style antics for a while, but then he seems to realise the limits of that kind of action and shifts to hints of genetic mutation and a 'don't mess with mother nature' parable. That merges into a 'first contact' kind of thing as human and ant come together to negotiate for peace (yes, really). Somewhere in the middle of that, though, he gets bored, blows everything up, and says 'ahh screw it, it was aliens'. The plot-ending explosion happens because of the actions of one lone ant, who crawled into the brain of one of the humans characters earlier in the film and has been slowly making him nuttier and nuttier, culminating in 'kaboom'.
So is there anything memorable or worthwhile in The Hive, other than playing 'make up your own story because this movie doesn't seem to have one'? Well, not really, no. It's at its most entertaining when it's at its silliest (such as the scene where the leads are menaced by a giant ant made of ants), and the best acting performance comes from the former Luke Duke of Hazzard County.
Apparently, the film is the 8th in the Maneater series of films (there are 25 in total; collect 'em all!). Which just goes to show that there is a market for this kind of schlock. Sadly, I suspect I am that market, but I honestly don't think there is much in this one to recommend it, even to fans of this kind of thing.
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