CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Insect-human hybrids provide the scares at the 2026 Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The festival, which is hosted by the Entomology Graduate Student Association, takes place Feb. 28 at Foellinger Auditorium. It is free and open to the public.
Insect-human hybridization has long been a theme for horror movies, said May Berenbaum, the founder of the festival and the head of the entomology department, a Swanlund Endowed Chair of entomology and the director of the Center for Advanced Study.
“Apparently there is no concept so repugnant to humans as that they could become part insect,” she said.
The festival previously has shown the movie “The Fly,” in which an experiment with teleportation gone wrong fuses a man with a fly. This year’s feature film is “Infestation.” The film’s main character wakes up in a cocoon and escapes to find that giant insects are attacking people and spinning cocoons around them. They emerge from the cocoons infested and eventually become insects themselves ― a take on zombie films, Berenbaum said.
The film festival’s tagline references “horrific films and horrific filmmaking,” but “Infestation” is one of the higher-quality feature films the festival has shown, she said.
“It has pretty good production values and a sense of humor. I think it’s a really good choice,” she said. “I like the movie because it’s not quite a parody. It’s more of an homage. All the tropes are there.”
The insects, though, “bear very little resemblance to anything real,” she said, looking like beetles on the movie poster but flying like wasps in the movie.
The feature film “gives us the opportunity to talk about what happens in nature on occasion,” Berenbaum said.
While insect-human hybrids are the stuff of fiction, there are animals and plants that are genetic chimeras: single organisms possessing two different genotypes, or genetic material. Gynandromorphs are organisms that possess both male and female sex chromosomes.
Bilateral gynandromorphism is common in insects, in which one side of the insect has male characteristics and the other side has female characteristics, Berenbaum said. For example, male and female butterflies are distinguishable by their wing patterns. Gynandromorph butterflies have different patterns on each wing.
Male stag beetles have large mandibles, or mouth parts resembling antlers, while the females have much smaller mandibles. Gynandromorph beetles are asymmetrical, with one large mandible on one side and a small one on the other side, Berenbaum said.
The idea of an insect-human hybrid influenced not only movie making but also toy development. The Sectaur toys of the 1980s were action figures featuring humans that were “tele-bonded” with insects. The toys were adapted for an animated TV miniseries, and an episode of “Sectaurs” will be screened at the festival before the feature film.
The festival will also include:
An insect petting zoo.
Ventriloquist Hannah Leskosky ― Berenbaum’s daughter ― with a Venezuelan poodle moth puppet created for the festival. The poodle moth is a common name for a moth that is mostly white and fluffy. Leskosky’s puppet thinks it is part poodle and part moth.
Bugscope, a scanning electron microscope from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology that will show close-up images of insects.
An insect collection from Illinois alumnus Nathan Schiff.
Insect crafts.
A gallery of insect art from local K-12 students who participated in the festival’s art contest.
Activities begin at 5 p.m. The “Sectaurs” episode will be screened at 7:30 p.m. and “Infestation” at 8 p.m.
Editor’s notes: To contact May Berenbaum, email maybe@illinois.edu. More information about the Insect Fear Film Festival is available online.
