Reviewed by: Eduardo Gesio

As I pushed play, with my tub of popcorn and favorite pillow, I was more than ready to see some 1954 campy goodness.  Much to my chagrin, I was pleasantly dissapointed.  From the eerie opening scenes that are suspenseful even by modern standards (little girls are de facto creepy) to the irrational, yet subtely pervasive fear that giant ants live in the sewer systems of every major american city, Them! was legitimately good.

Giant, radioactive ants present an interesting segway into pre-modern filmmaking.  There is something strangely believable about 1950's special effects, perhaps due to the incredibly low expectations, where as Cameron-esque 3-D CGI would have a more difficult time scaring me into thinking the ants will eat me.  Things that were done then, could not be done today.  (Woody Allen's Antz not withstanding)

There are, however, plenty of "what on earth?!?" moments:  "oh, we need to save the world, so let's go into the ant's nest with a police officer, an FBI detective, a sexy scientist, and a general (Really? A general?)  The iconic in-color title screen and the exclamatory title itself (THEM!) contribute to the movie's cult status but take away from the film itself.  To be fair, without the famed imagery, I probably would never have seen the movie anyway. 

Overall, Them! is a solid sci-fi film, post-Metropolis and pre-2001: A Space Odyssey.  Insipid and unnecessary analogies aside, I liked it.