In The Nest, genetically-modified cockroaches are personified, embodying the worst human traits and characteristics with monstrous effects that move them inevitably toward death and destruction. In the final scenes of the film, Beth’s
examination of Elias’s papers begins to reveal the truth about these
cockroaches’ genetic alteration. Instead of condos, Intec has built a research
facility where, according to Hubbard, her experiments are benevolent rather
than destructive and meant to create cockroaches that will destroy all other
roaches and then die without reproducing. Instead the cockroaches have grown so
powerful that even a lethal pesticide can’t destroy them. A solution arises
when they realize the roaches have become social animals and must have a nest
and a queen to guide them.
The
final sinister scenes of the movie emphasize a possible solution to the horror
of this now monstrous nature. As Beth explains, if they destroy the caves, they
will destroy the nest, suggesting that if they destroy the horror setting, the
monstrous insect horror will also disappear. The roaches all go toward the
queen in the caves like “a collective unconscious,” making an overt connection
to an anthropomorphized cockroach mythology.
And
Beth’s hypothesis rings true. In the cave where the nest is hidden, Dr. Hubbard
is destroyed by a roach figure built out of multiple human skeletons. Tarbell
and Beth escape the cave before it explodes, and the two kiss, an ending that
perhaps satisfactorily resolves the insect conflict in the film but leaves gaps
in the love triangle connecting with it. In The
Nest, both science and the cockroach become monstrous, but only the bugs
and the mad scientist die, perhaps signifying the need to destroy our worst
selves.