Skin Crawling Wall Street Drama, ‘Mosquito State’

Reviewed by Jarrod Wolfhunter

Mosquito State is a combination of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho meets Orwell’s 1984, meets Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

The disturbing film follows the steady mental decline of Wall-Street savant, Richard Boca, into insanity. His physical transition from a professional – surrounded by alpha-bro-dudes – to limping monstrosity is harrowing. Boca is ravaged, nightly, by giant swarms of mosquitoes that breed in his dark, sleek, sterile and edgy apartment as his psychosis deepens.

Mosquito State is artistically littered with scenes of the mosquito life-cycle: egg to larvae to pupa to adult; corresponding with film plot.

Featuring a haunting operatic and string-section film score that frequently hits the same high-pitch humming notes that disturb our sleep in mosquito season.

The directors have done an outstanding job in seamlessly melding the sci-fi horror genre to this politico-bureau, post-modern take on Wall-Street in 2007, pre-market crash.

The entire film is unsettling and disturbing and caution should be applied when watching this in lockdown.

This is not a feel-good-film, and your skin will crawl through-out.

★★★★

Mosquito State is streaming on Shudder from Aug 26