Ants have carved a space for themselves in film history with the sci-fi classic Them! (1954), a cautionary tale about the dangers of radiation that turns the small insects into gigantic creatures. The monstrous quality is dialed up to great effect, and it unearths a lot of terror in the process. But what really makes these ants unsettling is that they retain their uncanny ability to coordinate and communicate with one another to fight off the human threat. They’re known as nature’s architects for a reason. They work as one, tuned to a singular vision.
Saul Bass’s Phase IV focuses on the ants’ smarts as well, but it finds there’s no need to turn the insects into giants to generate fear. Here, the ants stay small. It’s their intelligence that grows. The result is an experience that mixes awe, horror, and classic science fiction for a story that reminds viewers that humanity is but an evolutionary step away from being knocked off the top of the food chain.
Phase IV is not an outright horror movie. It’s a science fiction movie first that imagines a scenario that’s so phenomenally weird that it inspires a feeling of existential dread that pervades throughout. Ants are displaying strange behavior, from developing a cross-species hive mind to creating strange anthill monuments that signal a fundamental shift in their evolutionary trajectory. The insects have become smarter. Now they want to replace humans as the most dominant species on the planet.
Two scientists become the targets of these ants. One of them (Nigel Davenport) is arrogant, confident in his safety because of the natural order of things. The other scientist (Michael Murphy) is more cautious, eager to communicate with the ants out of fear for their reaction. What follows is a showdown based on intelligence, a battle of minds that puts biological superiority on the line.
Saul Bass is the legendary graphic designer behind iconic movie posters such as Vertigo’s and The Shining’s. He’s also known for creating striking title sequences, with Hitchcock’s Psycho and North by Northwest among them. As to be expected from a creator of this caliber, Phase IV is a visual masterpiece that gives ants their due.
Bass, along with wildlife photographer Ken Middleham (who helped shoot the insect sequences), go for super closeups of the ants to not only capture their impressive physical dimensions but also to imbue them with character. It would be unfair to say the two scientists are the only main characters in the story. The ants fall under the category as well, with some having full arcs to follow. The closeups give them equal representational value. They don’t look like things you can easily put under a magnifying glass to burn up. These ants would find a way to create a bigger magnifying glass to burn humans with.
The movie finds different ways to generate a certain kind of eeriness with the insects that’s based on the abilities the ants acquire after they become super intelligent. For instance, they can create these abstract monuments that also act as complex ant hills. They come off more as displays of power over the humans rather than just updated versions of their homes. They’re alien-looking, beyond human comprehension.
There are a few other elements that look to horror to build on the ants’ march to superiority. Their engineering abilities, for instance, feature more concentrated methods of destruction. They make small tunnels inside structures to weaken them to the point of collapse, leaving humans with no places to hide. They do the same when attacking humans. Small holes in fresh corpses point to a highly coordinated approach to murder that completely nullifies humanity’s height advantage over the insects. Super intelligence, so it seems, also lays the groundwork for finer methods of violence.
Phase IV finds that the animals and insects we underestimate the most are never too far off from taking the biological crown away from us. The decision to not change the ants’ size, to void the size differential, leads to a very humbling experience that knocks humanity off its pedestal. No need for aliens or monsters. Just one of the smallest insects around taking on the planet’s dominant life form. It’s the story of David and Goliath, if David were a hive mind with an infinitely more ambitious existential agenda.
