Last year was bad. Like, BAD bad. Historically, unimaginably bad. The kind of bad that makes you want to Eternal Sunshine your memories of it. And yet, just think: It could have been worse! On top of a global pandemic, economic turmoil, natural disasters and an endless barrage of presidential scandals and misconduct, we could have been menaced by a plague of giant insects that posed a deadly threat to not only the world’s honeybee population, but our own environment.
Oh no, wait, that happened too.
Attack of the Murder Hornets is another reminder that 2020 was a colossal dumpster fire, although Michael Paul Stephenson’s feature-length documentary (premiering Feb. 20 on Discovery+, as part of its “Undiscovered” series) isn’t all doom and gloom. The Best Worst Movie director’s latest locates hope in its tale about the Asian giant hornets that began appearing on our continent in late 2019, and became headline news following their discovery in Washington state shortly thereafter. With an appealing mix of terror and humor, it transforms its report on this national crisis into a portrait of successful government and community collaboration, and the way in which our safety—and future—is guaranteed by science.
Stephenson’s film opens with a massacre. In November 2019, beekeeper Ted McFall was shocked to find that 60,000 of his honeybees had been decapitated in a slaughter that was as brutal as it was perplexing. Ted gets choked up remembering this gory scene, which left him with a “helpless feeling,” and compelled him to grasp at straws—had they been gassed? Or had a cult offed them in a Satanic ritual? Answers were forthcoming when, two miles away, Jeff Kornelis stumbled upon a giant hornet on the ground, and uploaded pictures of it to Reddit’s whatsthisbug forum, where he was advised to pass his photos along to the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA). That, in turn, got entomologists Sven-Erik Spichiger and Chris Looney on the case, as well as area residents such as Ruthie Danielsen who fashioned themselves as “citizen scientists” and were determined to help.
As apex predators that chomp on, behead, and spray venom at their honeybee prey (and anyone else unfortunate enough to be in their midst), murder hornets can do serious damage to local agriculture and, thus, our entire ecosystem. To its detriment, Attack of the Murder Hornets doesn’t really explain the full extent of that threat. But it remains clear that the species—which originated in Japan—is a big-time problem, both on a macro and micro scale, as proven by images of hospital patients pockmarked with giant stings and bites from the creatures. Awash in unnerving close-ups of the loudly buzzing fiends, which Sven rightly says look like “a child’s toy” because of their enormous size, Attack of the Murder Hornets establishes that the insects are a considerable danger, and in need of eradication lest they proliferate throughout the U.S.
Like COVID-19, stymieing the spread of murder hornets from the outset—when such an endeavor might still be feasible—is of paramount importance, and Attack of the Murder Hornets traces Chris and Sven’s attempts to do just that through inventive scientific means. Their main method of trying to catch a specimen, and thus get a general idea about a nest’s location, is through the use of homemade traps involving plastic containers and an orange juice-rice wine concoction, which the jovial (and alternately hopeful and exasperated) Chris strings up throughout the forest and checks regularly, generally to deflating results. Before long, the community is also setting such traps around the heavily wooded region, as well as reporting any sightings. It’s the latter that pays dividends, as Phillip Bovenkamp’s detection of a murder hornet at his house provides Chris and Sven with their first true lead and, with it, an opportunity to preemptively stamp out this plague.
Stephenson treats his film as a straightforward non-fiction story about a potential environmental calamity being combated by professionals and amateurs. Nonetheless, he also amusingly leans into the somewhat hyperbolic nature of the entire affair, be it through on-screen text that identifies subjects as “The Citizen” and “The Beholder,” title cards that describe locations as “The Tactical Field” and “Hornet Central,” and animated segments about the possible ways in which the insects first made it to our shores. Attack of the Murder Hornets winks at its audience just the right amount, including via its own title and the term “murder hornet” itself, which Chris says is incorrect, because it ascribes human morality (i.e. murder) to an animal whose viciousness is instinctive.
Drone shots designed to replicate a murder hornet’s POV round out Stephenson’s playful aesthetic approach, which becomes more conventional once Attack of the Murder Hornets starts detailing Chris and Sven’s creative efforts to deduce their targets’ home. After catching a live murder hornet, the duo and their WSDA cohorts—aided by University of Washington Ph.D. student Vikram Iyer—devise an ingenious plan: to super-glue a tiny Bluetooth tag to the insect, and then use directional antennas to follow it back to its nest. It’s a crazy plot that doesn’t reap immediate results, but through trial-and-error experimentation that Stephenson documents in real time, it turns out to be a clever and resourceful method of finding a figurative needle in a haystack.
Also featuring Conrad Bérubé, the first man to have destroyed a North American murder hornet nest (in British Columbia), Attack of the Murder Hornets conveys not only the severity of this situation, but the fact that a handful of intrepid locals have been left to handle it. The fact that the $900 billion pandemic stimulus package passed on Dec. 21 earmarked financial assistance to combat the murder hornet epidemic (in Washington and other states) suggests that the national government is at least somewhat aware of the emergency. Yet Stephenson’s film is most engaging as an intimate snapshot of grassroots-level research and activism, carried out by both individuals with degrees, and those who simply care about the welfare of their neighbors, habitat, and country at large. It’s proof that sometimes, solutions to catastrophic problems come from small groups of dedicated, scientifically minded altruists.
