The true definition of missed opportunity is far less forgiving. In reality, when a director or performer neglects their prospects, there is a reciprocal element at the crux of the confusion. No moviemaker purposefully sets out to undermine expectations. Indeed, what they intend to do is intently prove their passion to you. Unfortunately, you have your own ideals mucking up the connection, and the result is two filmic ships passing in the dead of darkest night. For many aficionados and critics, Red Cockroaches is some manner of minor masterpiece. It sails on a sea of inventive visuals and rudders its rudimentary limits with style and flash. But in this particular motion picture port, such a flaccid, fetid film can find no purchase. More than a missed opportunity, this movie is an out and out waste of time.

The DVD:
Adam has just broken up with his rich bitch girlfriend when, while waiting for the subway, he sees someone very familiar. Before he can make contact however, the girl vanishes. Fast-forward a few days and there's a knock at the door. It's the girl, only this time she's looking for a room to rent. Even though Adam is desperate to have her move in, he initially turns her away. Fast-forward a few more days and Adam is in the cemetery, visiting his dead father and sister. Wouldn't you know it, there's the girl again. After a brief bit of flirting, the couple begin to make love right there in the graveyard. When an irate priest interrupts them, the girl mysteriously vanishes.

Fast-forward another few days and Adam gets a frantic call from his mother. Turns out his sister is not dead. Lily has just been in a coma for 10 years. When older brother confronts his sibling, it turns out to be...that girl. Indeed, the strange chick giving Adam the big eye is his kin...and Adam suddenly doesn't care. Thus begins a sick, incestual affair, an on-again, off-again sexual obsession that threatens to tear them both apart. What's even worse, this all takes place in a freakish future world were acid rain creates genetic mutants, a Big Brother like DNA corporation promises a second chance at life, and the subways and sewers are filled with revolting Red Cockroaches.

The best way to describe Red Cockroaches is unattractive people doing vague things for no apparent reason. Maybe a better way to describe it is a first time filmmaker's repugnant incest fantasies played out by a group of disinterested and/or unpleasant actors. Perhaps it would be safer to say that this is the first part of a supposed trilogy that, hopefully, will immediately forget all about parts two and three before more of its meandering mediocrity can be spread upon the Earth. Or it might just be simpler to say this is a worthless piece of bug dung and leave it at that. Writer/ Director/ Editor/ Cameraman/ Any Other Job You Care to Name Miguel Coyula must have thought he was creating his own superbly surreal sci-fi allegory here, as many of the shots and most of the narrative are based in grand sweeping views of barren, dull landscapes and CG-enhanced cityscapes. But instead of epic, this is ipecac, the kind of indecipherable mess that we expect from grade schoolers in first year composition class - or unemployed film students with WAY too much time and a Macintosh on their hands.

Red Cockroaches fails in almost every category it attempts. As a family drama, it's about as deep as a kiddie pool. The basic premise and/or problem is this: due to some past molestation/experimentation (whatever) Adam has the hots for his less than fetching sister Lily. Apparently, this incestual infatuation has been around since they were kids, and so when she returns after 10 years MIA, Adam's got inappropriate wood all over again. Throw in some sloppy speculative falderal about sinister cloning companies, mutated humans, acid rain and wicked insects and we're supposed to be creaming our jeans over this junk.

It's not that Coyula is incompetent as a filmmaker. He has a wonderful visual style, filled with sinister shadow and controlled color. He understands the artistic limits of composition and framing, and he enjoys spicing up his sequences with inventive camera angles and kinetic editing. Before Adam and Lily get friendly in a cemetery, Coyula delivers several stunning shots. When Adam goes to visit his mom, the use of autumn with its turning leaves and near barren trees creates a wonderfully somber atmosphere.

Coyula just can't write a cohesive script. Certainly this film is meant to be ambiguous, unclear and careful in how it meters out its details. But since we are not privy to the other two sections of this planned trilogy, we are instantly lost. This is because Coyula doesn't payoff on anything he starts. Lily beings the movie as incredibly mannered, with an accent so faux French that Parisians are already planning protests. Within 20 minutes, she's all-American and remembering her crazy, confused childhood. Why the sudden shift, what she represents to the story, and what that weird thing was inside her tooth is NEVER given a good explanation.

Instead, Coyula beats around the bush, tempting the audience but never coming outright and telling us anything. This happens a lot with most of the plot points - the news reports on mutants, the mysterious missing children, the mother's sudden change of heart, Adam's best friends freaky phone glasses. It's almost as if Coyula came up with some neat ideas, but then recognized he didn't have the imagination - or budget - to realize them properly. So he just left them - and their significance - for the future installments of this story. Unfortunately, that means the current viewer is left wondering just what the weirdness is going on. Red Cockroaches is the very definition of all set up and no satisfaction.

Then there is the cast. Hopefully, Adam Plotch and Talia Rubel will understand when they are classified as performers who should never, ever be allowed to disrobe onscreen ever again, under penalty of swift and immediate vivisection. Adam is pale, doughy and flecked with body hair. His face resembles a hound dog with massive sleep deprivation, and his hair is an inconsistent array of frizzes, comb-overs and dried straw.

Talia Rubel is a tad better, only because she's not as willing as Adam to bare her bumpy bodkin for all the world to get queasy over. Still, her face is far too long for her features, and she too has bags under her eyes capable of carrying a weeks worth of groceries. In a skuzzy seduction scene, Ms. Rubel goes giggling away from the camera in a skimpy pair of panties. Honestly, the panties are perfectly normal - it's the excessive amount of junk in her trunk that makes the fit see poor and problematic. Naturally it gets nasty when these two bump uglies - literally!!!

Granted, it's not fair to pick on the attractiveness of a cast, since there are lots of homely and heinous superstars making the Hollywood big bucks. But here, we are supposed to feel a kind of carnal connection between Adam and Lily. She is supposed to be so drop dead attractive that her brother would have no choice but to penetrate her anally using ketchup (or maybe it was catsup) as a lubricant. Her instant sensuality is supposed to get elderly building landlords fantasizing about having oral sex with her.

Adam is supposed to be such a stud muffin catch that a previous girlfriend goes slightly stalker over him. Yet together, they are intolerable, like catching a couple of homeless people knocking boots in the living room in the middle of the day. And since neither actor has the chops to convince us of their appeal beyond the superficial, we are left with looks to base our conclusions on. Given how gangly, awkward and just plain unappealing Plotch and Rubel are, their illicit love is nothing but doomed in our eyes.

From a purely technical standpoint, this is an amazing looking film. It has a real sense of style and an interesting cinematic aesthetic. But as a narrative, as an interesting or involving story, it is emotionally dead. We don't care about these characters, concern ourselves even less about their predicament, and can't work up a good bit of worry for the sci-fi world they supposedly inhabit. If the success of a film is based solely on how well we identify with the individuals at the center of the story, and how moved we are by their interaction, then Red Cockroaches is a complete failure.

If, on the other hand, you can weigh artistic intentions against those of the narrative, one must chalk up a minor victory for Miguel Coyula. His work behind the lens is the only thing meriting discussion here. One can easily see him becoming a major league motion picture player. All he needs now is an actual script, not just some incomprehensible scribbling, to guide his ideas. Plodding and impotent, this is one dull, depressing film.

The Video:
You've got to hand it to Heretic Films. Though they are new to the DVD game, they are producing some excellent looking digital transfers. The 1.33:1 full frame image of Red Cockroaches is amazing - filled with detail, color and ambience. The contrasts are crystal clear and we get some stunning vistas in the process. Sure, the CGI looks bad - obviously added in later during post - and some of the more esoteric choices (the tinting of sequences, the optical manipulation of the landscape) stand out as odd. Still, for a no budget made-on-the-fly digital film, Red Cockroaches looks very good.

The Audio:
Equally expressive is the Dolby Digital Stereo mix. Filled with immersive elements, atmospheric sonics and a nice amount of spatial gravity, the soundtrack really places us in the perplexing, antiseptic world of the characters. The use of music is subtle, yet never standoffish and all the dialogue is clean and easily understandable. As DVD presentations go, Red Cockroaches is professional and near perfect.

The Extras:
There are two major bonus features on this DVD, each one far more interesting and appealing that the movie itself. First and foremost, there is a full-length audio commentary with Coyula and actors Adam Plotch and Jeff Pucillo. Right up front, there are several important revelations. Coyula admits to not being interested in casting "beautiful" people. He is interested in actors who are more quirky and eccentric than attractive. He also doesn't like to explain his visual symbols, and avoids any attempt at clarifying what the tooth, or the bugs, actually mean to the movie. Plotch tells us how his costar, Talia Rubel more or less hated him throughout the entire shoot, and how he was mistaken as a molester while filming a scene with a little girl. Pucillo's involvement is sparse throughout most of the screening, interjecting occasional insights and jokes, but not really part of the overall presentation. Frankly, there is more energy and information in this alternate narrative then in the 82 minutes of the movie itself.

The other interesting added element is a short film by Coyula called Valvula de luz (Light Valve). Filmed in black and white, and loaded with pretentious, avant-garde imagery, this weird, warped tale of alienation and madness makes little sense, but does offer some indelible, engaging images. Indeed, what you learn from this movie is that Coyula is very much a visual director. He loves the juxtaposition of pictures and the attempted narrative drive that can come from a combination of specific shots. Proving that plot is not his strong point, Valvula de luz is a hint that, when dealing with his own subconscious inspirations, this director can be incredibly interesting. Together with a six minute interview on how Red Cockroaches was made, a collection of deleted scenes and outtakes, a text-based director's bio, and a compilation of storyboards and trailers, this is a well fleshed out DVD presentation. Too bad the film it supports isn't up to the level of attention given to it by the extras.

Final Thoughts:
It is quite possible that, at least for this critic, Red Cockroaches just didn't click. Perhaps for many out there in home theater land the idiosyncratic choice of actors by director Miguel Coyula will speak louder than any pretty boy/girl pandering. It could be that, after years in service of the celluloid muse, this writer has grown bitter and jaded, unable to see a no-budget digital gemstone smoldering right under his overloaded and sleep-deprived eyes. Or maybe, just maybe, Red Cockroaches is a total waste of time. It could be that its Apple Computer cinematics are just a post-millennial version of the Amiga and the Atari from decades before. There's no denying the unappealing presence of the performers here. Even their director gives them a kind of blind date seal of approval, arguing that they are more "interesting" and loaded with "personality" than any tangible beauty. So if you want to see unsightly people doing non-discernable things all in service of one man's more than capable considerations, give this meandering movie a try. But be warned. This is not a missed opportunity. This is a decided affront.

Want more Gibron Goodness? Come to Bill's TINSEL TORN REBORN Blog (Updated Frequently) and Enjoy! Click Here