Not tired of being bled dry enough? Fancy having some of your energy and hard-earned free time stolen? Because that’s what Leeches! promises, and boy does it certainly deliver, becoming the perfect compliment to all your other bad life choices – college, your ex-girlfriend, your career, well at least you have a job. You DO have a job, don’t you?
Lakecrest College is being invaded by predatory parasites, and its swim team are the prey. Ben, Steve, and the rest of the swimming athletes are in hot water as they encounter deadly monsters with a taste for human blood. Small and vulnerable at first, the species has developed into a monstrous size; and alarm bells begin to ring when an an athlete turns up dead.
This is alright in terms of production. For a trash reviewer, it’s a relief that the crew invested in a tripod, and additionally learned how to use it. Though the editing and construction isn’t anything special, for the most part it makes for watchable viewing, crudely but effectively telling the tale of a disastrous invasion rapidly expanding undetected within the confines of normal society.
The flick is total teen thriller material, and if there wasn’t enough testosterone pumped into the show, there’s an unusual fascination with the masculine body, with an uncomfortable number of frames focusing on the male buttocks. The incubation sequences are legitimately unsettling and foreboding: yet the cheap props are an exceeding let down, falling short of convincing or acceptable, despite insistently edited to appear so.
Leeches! also threatens to reveal a little intelligence with its awareness of drugs. Dabbling with chemicals as rampant mutants are on the loose, the teenagers are up against two enemies at once, and there’s a brush upon something larger. For a generic slasher, there’s no room exactly for deep philosophy or wisdom of course, but it’s still a miss. The attack/death scenes are a real drag too, and are pitiful at best, proving that action is not the quality of the film either.
So this is bad – but not THAT bad. While the tropes and stereotypes are obvious, it’s far from terrible, and though its content is poor and minimal, there’s a level of competence in horror which proves for a mildly satisfying watch. Especially if you like looking at man nipples – lots of it here.
4/10
Possession Media 