Attack of the Murder Hornets (63)

When we talk about a COVID-era film, it is easy and tempting to attach this title to any creation that feels relevant to the deep roots of our current reality. Works that revolve around actual epidemic(s) diseases, or other psychological and/or physiological crises. On a more literal note, highlighting both an actual crisis taking place in the current pandemic crisis, Attack of the Murder Hornets exceptionally renders the chills.

Discovery+ feature-length documentary deals with a non-so-static crisis that evolved from an apparent migration of the Asian Giant Hornet to the NorthWestern parts of North America. The immersion and consequent merge of science, farming methods, and citizen “responsible attitude” takes an unexpected emotional turn, as if what we currently need is a Braveheart-ian dive against the external enemy. Shades of political machinations are more than evident, especially when reading this invasion against the backdrop of climate change and COVID-19 surge. The director chooses to take a comical approach that never avoids to hint to more cynical potential outcomes, which vary from toxic-masculine greed and individualistic tendencies that override the collective conscience. At the climax of the film, when people from all over the place finally manage to capture the predator, the owner of the land where this capture took place decides to keep the predator for his own benefit, potentially selling it to Ebay - which could lead to another attack and potential imbalance to our eco-system.

Suburbian paranoia of the settlers of the New World is not a new thing, for a canon of film and literature genres exist to give us enough information to dissect. Nonetheless, in the society of the individual, tendencies that make us come together against the enemy - which can be structures of power or natural predators - reflect on an internal ambivalence that this documentary renders insolvable.

In true 2020-21 manner, this could be the first great COVID-era film.