Captivating movie !

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

It's the future again and the world is screwed up again. It seems acid rain is mutating people and a company called DNA 21 is staging a cover-up, but none of that is really much in focus as the plot concerns an unattractive guy falling in love/lust with an unattractive girl. He lives in an apartment in NYC and become his new roommate. I've only just finished watching the movie and already I find it hard to talk about the plot because there pretty much isn't one. In short, "Red Cockroaches" is a zero budget sci-fi dystopian incest movie.People have been making a lot of noise over the visuals in this film. What they actually added up to were a few futuristic aircraft tossed into shots of the city and a few badly staged shots of the mutated red cockroaches of the title. Special effects included the movie looked like crap. The fact that the film had no budget does not change the fact that the movie is ugly. I'll admit it looks a trifle better than a zero budget movie, but that's the same as saying the CG looks bad enough for an expensive movie of ten years earlier.There is little to be said. The two leads are ugly and their characters behave in ugly ways. It isn't a profound tragedy and it doesn't really have any good dark humor. The "story"'s unpleasant resolution doesn't teach us anything new. Come to think of it I haven't been this hard up to say something nice about a movie since I saw Brian Yuzna's "Faust". Both are thorough-going cinematic sadism.The DVD featured another short film from the director, Miguel Coyula. The short film is also poorly paced, unpleasant and pointless. Why this guy is making movies is beyond me. The package says this film is the winner of "20 film festival awards worldwide", which makes me wonder is that many film festivals give out a last place award. This whole review has sounded cruel and negative so I'll close on the same note and say I'd have been happier watching an Uwe Boll movie.

Every movie has it's good and it's bads, and this is no exception. The scifi aspect of it was pleasantly low key. The director seems to have a knack for cinematography, which by and large was superior. The world it set up was interesting, and there is nothing wrong with the Sci Fi elements.Except for, to remind us that it is the future, flying cars are digitally added time and time again. Why? Enough of the flying cars. Show a few of them, and that's fine. Not every time somebody is on the street, one just happens to whirl by. It's agitating. Not all of the time did it bother me, but sometimes, when I am trying to pay attention to the characters on screen that that hunk of metal comes across the screen.The "Personal" story of the film takes over past the scifi aspects, which generally is something I respect in a film. Not this time. The story revolves around a thoroughly unpleasant man's sexual tension and attraction to a mysterious young woman (who is equally unpleasant). Sure, the mystery involved was more important then the fact that these were characters I couldn't care about. I probably wasn't supposed to like them, thus the attraction to the mystery.And isn't everyone tired of the cliché "Man sees Mysterious girl who changes his life" thing anyway? I mean, seriously. Too many indy film clichés in this. Including the fact that if the characters aren't swearing at each other, they are trying to say something somewhat intellectual. People don't talk like that in real life.Mysteries remain unsolved by the end, probably because this was planned as the first part in a trilogy. Which is fine. However, nothing conclusive ended this film. There was no catharsis, and all we got was a card that said "Red Cockroaches" to let us know the film was over.With all my criticisms of the movie, I am looking forward to viewing the next two films. Perhaps the Director might have improved on his craft, because that's all it really needs. It had a lot going for it, but unfortunately became just another prententious indy film.

Think Peter Jackson back in the days when he made Bad Taste for $150,000. Cut that budget to $2000 and give him a digital camera. He might have made something very much like this off the wall production by award winning Cuban filmmaker Miguel Coyula. You have a freakish, whacky movie that looks as if it might be a cheap soft porn movie only with sci-fi themes instead of sex themes. (very minor spoilers follow) Set somewhere in the future, Adam meets a lovely girl on the subway only to discover later in the story that it's his sister that he thought had dies years ago. Things get weirder. We're talking a future where DNA replacements feature alongside standard commercials and the news features standard warnings about mutant insects and ozone effects. Red Cockroaches is the first in a planned trilogy - it's almost enough for every indie sci-fi b-movie fan to want to get out of their seat and pool their loose change to put into a Miguel Coyula fund. If this is what he can do with only $2000 the mind boggles.

Red Cockroaches is a freakish, bizarre, avant-garde-ish science fiction/thriller about forbidden love and mutants. Yeah, it's odd, but it's incredibly captivating. The acting is exquisite, the directing divine, and the cinematography is absolutely splendid. The most interesting thing about it? It was shot on a budget of $0 as a labor of love from award winning Cuban filmmaker Miguel Coyula.