So close to being a real masterpiece ... great visuals and story but slow pacing and sparse dialogue had the effect of reducing the tension, which to me, is the films biggest drawback. However, a stunning and memorable achievement

I feel like I just took a course in visual composition; any given frame could be hung in a museum. Decent script backing it up too. Certainly miles above all the other nature-run-amok nonsense (ie. Night of The Lepus, Squirm, Deadly Bees) in vogue at the time.

Low key, intelligent sci-fi with some memorably creepy/suspenseful setpieces. Fine performances and excellent photography enhance this sole directorial outing from titles designer Saul Bass.

Once you go all out with a sci-fi premise like this, it had better be good. But it almost never is, and while I've seen worse than Phase IV in every department, it's pretty fucking embarrassing. The script is almost antishly workmanlike and dumb and unimaginative, the insect macro shots are beautiful in themselves but kind of random, and the acting blows, though Lynne Frederick is outrageously hot.

For a movie about ants taking over the world I'm quite surprised by my score. There were actually some visual achievements worth mentioning.

Gets a point for being parodied by MST3K.

The first feature by Bass, after an exceptionally noticeable career as a creator of movie credits sequences (_Anatomy of a Murder_, _A Walk on the Wild Side_, etc.). Comfortably within the conventions of low-budget science fiction, Bass's big effects are his magnifying-glass closeups of the insects. These are often a trifle ornamental and design-y, but still quite fascinating and disorienting.

As far as bad movies go, I didn't think it was that bad... until the end.

Human scientists vs. superintelligent ants. Not bad, but it's not hard to understand why Saul Bass went back to specializing in title sequences after this

Interesting movie, but I feel it overlooks some of the obvious while trying to be too complicated. Excellent ant photography.

The acting may not be the best in the world, but there are many others things I loved about this movie. There are some truly great close-up scenes with the ants that made me gasp. Also, the script itself was working fine I think, after all this is a horror-movie, not Shakespeare. Many scenes could have been made more overstated than they were. Even the ending was fair enough.

Chilling images of destruction are wasted in this derivative script.