When you watch a horror film, you often get a sense of who is going to die. And watching the first act of Noseeums (dir Raven Carter), I had a very definite sense of "Yup. These b__es are going down."
Ember is a student living somewhere up north who goes on a road trip down to Florida with three fellow students, her roomie Tessa and two party girls, Abby and Lexie. The four seem companionable enough in the car journey, although Abby makes some iffy comments about Ember's changing accent and Lexie and Tessa back her up.
As the film progresses Abby and Lexie show more and more passive aggressiveness toward Ember and Tessa often does not back her up. Meanwhile Ember has discovered something in the forest and then she starts having disturbing visions...
The premise is intriguing, a mix of swamp horror, mean girls, a student road trip and.... land rights. The first few spell fun and the last definitely not.
To be fair, there is very little fun in Noseeums. The acting is pretty poor, the script full of holes and the special effects laughable. There are a few plus points, though. It aims high, asking questions about accountability in the 21st century for evils inflicted in the previous two, in this case African Americans being driven from their land by white folks.
But there are very few scares, and the titular noseeums, or midges, are not very effective as attackers. Really, the horror is in the entitlement of white people who don't understand accumulated privilege. But the script has the subtlety of a sledgehammer and the most interesting characters, Ember's mother and best friend Jas, get very little screen time. These noseeums are not nearly biting enough.