What you have here is a enjoyable spiritual cousin to The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Thing. A meteor falls to Earth and out comes a worm creature that infects a guy (Michael Rooker) in a small town, who becomes the main vessel for the hive mind. He does their bidding and infects a woman who becomes the balloon host for lots of little worm parasites. As those worms go into people’s mouths, they become a part of the collective and start acting like zombies. They eat flesh, but only because they really like meat for some reason.

The performances by the cast were exactly what the needed to be. Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, and Michael Rooker were the stand outs. The pacing also keeps you engaged with some occasional tense moments. Looking back, it seemed like it should have been a bit more of a dire situation than it ended up being.

Even though the ending was a bit weak, it was nice that they didn’t do the thing where you kill the “queen” and all the hive survives. Sometimes there needs to be a cost to letting a parasitic alien worm force it’s way into your mouth.

It’s no masterpiece, but compared to the other dreck that is the horror genre, this is quite fun and even worth the occasional rewatch.

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