I love a good bug movie. I’ve owned various bugs — mostly tarantulas and scorpions — over my two and a half decades. Just a few weeks ago, I lamented how we need more spider-based horror movies. The same could be said for just about any creepy-crawly, and Aik Karapetian’s The Brazen features quite a number of them. 

The Latvian horror movie playing at the Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival in Estonia runs just short of 80 minutes and moves with the smooth efficiency that the run-time demands. The plot could hardly be simpler: a family, on the verge of disintegration, inherits a house from their grandfather and they try to rid it of all sorts of bugs that have found a home in the walls as they convert the house into a dance studio. Karapetian’s bugs of choice stay within the realm of realism. Cockroaches, maggots, and other infestation-heavy insects — rather than vaguely supernatural spiders, as with 2023’s Infested, or some other monstrous creation — require eviction by force.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.