If you’re even slightly squeamish about insects, They Nest might push you into full-blown entomophobia. This made-for-TV creature feature from director Ellory Elkayem (Eight Legged Freaks) creeps along with familiar B-movie beats but manages to burrow under your skin with some genuinely unsettling bug-based horror. Think Arachnophobia meets The Thing, but with cockroaches—and far less prestige.

Thomas Calabro plays Dr. Cahill, a stressed-out surgeon escaping city burnout by retreating to a quaint island in Maine, only to be greeted by hostility from the locals and the rising threat of flesh-eating, mind-controlling cockroaches. The infestation is discovered via a waterlogged corpse, and as you’d expect, nobody believes Cahill until it’s far too late. Add Dean Stockwell to the mix as a cranky islander, and you’ve got a reliable genre face to anchor the mayhem when it hits.

Despite some low-rent production values and a fairly predictable plot, They Nest offers a few effective chills, especially when the critters start crawling into the more intimate spaces of the human body. The practical effects are modest but used cleverly, and Elkayem leans into the paranoia of small-town denial with just enough flair to keep it from feeling entirely by-the-numbers.

The Prognosis:

Where the film stumbles is in its uneven tone and forgettable characters, who mostly serve as bug fodder. But for fans of creature features who enjoy a slow buildup and a grotesque payoff, They Nest has enough squirmy moments to satisfy. It never reaches cult classic status, but it’s an enjoyable slice of early 2000s horror that earns its place in the insect invasion subgenre—just don’t watch it during dinner.

• Saul Muerte