Queen Crab (2015)

 

Dr Miller is a scientist experimenting with grapes that he has genetically engineered with enhanced growth properties.  Unbeknown to the good Doctor, however, his daughter Melissa has been feeding these grapes to her 'best friend', a crab that lives in the local lake.

Unfortunately, Melissa and her buddy are soon separated: a laboratory explosion kills both her parents, and she is sent to live with relatives.

Twenty years later, Melissa returns to her childhood home, and something huge begins to stir beneath the waters of the lake ...

So yeah, what we have here is your basic 'girl meets crab, girl accidentally turns crab into giant monster' scenario.

Now, you might well look at this film's title and immediate write it off as yet another minimum effort Asylum creature feature, but it's not actually from the cinematic bottom-feeders.  Instead it comes from writer-director Brett Piper, who has been offering up low budget SF since the 1980s.

And let's be clear: this is definitely low budget SF.  You might expect this to be most obviously demonstrated by the film's effects, but these prove a surprisingly mixed bag.  There's definitely some cheap and unconvincing CGI on display, but the production team have used a mixture of other techniques, including real crabs, practical props, and even stop motion.  I love a bit of a well-executed stop motion, and the work here really isn't too bad at all.  Especially for the effort required.  While I wouldn't ever call the results "realistic", I do think it looks pretty good.

It is in fact the film's acting that is the most obvious symptom of the low budget.  It's a bad sign that the kid playing Melissa-as-a-child is one of the most convincing performers on your roster, but that's absolutely the case here.

Of course, even with dodgy effects and even dodgier acting, a film can still be fun - I do adore nonsense like Hawk the Slayer and Starcrash, after all - but does Queen Crab manage that achievement?

To some extent, yes.

Piper clearly had his tongue somewhat in his cheek as he wrote the script; the State Wildlife department has procedures for mutations, mad scientists and genetic bombs, for instance, and I really don't think people can get away with assaulting sheriff's deputies the way they all do in this movie. Even if the deputy does deserve it.  I also don't think that "this local guy has a fully functional World War 2 tank" is something the local sheriff would give a nod and wink to, the way we see here.

But really, this is all just part and parcel of everything in the film being over-the-top; each and every human character is apparently completely lacking in impulse control - and in many cases, also lacking in the ability to say anything that isn't unnecessarily hostile.  It's fair to say that you probably won't mourn too many of the crab's victims.

Importantly, the giant crab rampage that is the film's finale is actually rather good fun.  I especially liked the scene where it tears apart a shack to get at the person hiding inside.  It's pretty well conceived and executed.

Queen Crab is cheap schlock, but it's surprisingly well-done cheap schlock. I'd only recommend it to people for whom that's a selling point, but if you're in that cohort, maybe give it a try.