MIMIC

Containing the now popular theme of biogenic manipulation of a species producing unintended monsters, recently seen in LOST WORLD and THE RELIC, MIMIC offers a paint-by-numbers horror movie which has giant insects stalking and eating humans. With a high-level cast, including independent film favorite Mira Sorvino, Emma star Jeremy Northam and F. Murray Abraham of AMADEUS, this movie promises quality, but merely becomes a conventional genre piece because it misses sharp dialogue, logic and a satisfying ending.

Sorvino cuts her action chops as Dr. Susan Tyler, an entomologist who pairs with Dr. Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam), deputy director for the Center for Disease Control in New York City. Three years ago, they eradicated a cockroach-borne epidemic that threatened the lives of the city’s children by successfully recombining the DNA of various insect species, creating a living biological counteragent to the disease. This living counteragent is a specialized insect called the Judas breed which was supposed to have only a female gender and to have been engineered to live for only a brief time.

Today, an advanced form of the insect is found to still be alive, and human beings are being mysteriously killed in the subway system. Dr. Tyler and Dr. Mann quickly discover that the insect has developed lungs, is human size and is mimicking the appearance of man in order to apprehend man as prey. The two doctors team up with a subway cop, Leonard (Charles S. Dutton), and a shoe shiner, Manny (Gaincarlo Giannini), to infiltrate the endless caverns under the New York City streets to find and to eradicate this dangerous species.

Genre fans may enjoy the movie because it has plenty of suspense, scares and even a little gore. There are some brief but graphic images of slimy bug-men attacking and eating humans. This is not a movie for the squeamish. It also contains some adult horror dialogue as well as profanities and obscenities.

This is not a high quality movie because it doesn’t deliver on its claims of excellence through great casting. The problem here, however, is a poor script which doesn’t give the intelligent actors room to demonstrate their craft. A fine, quirky sub-plot involves the two doctors who are not able to conceive a baby, though they are now fighting a species that was engineered not to breed but now does. After the two ultimately kill off the killer species, the script should honor the audience’s expectation to see the plus sign on a pregnancy test. Instead, the movie pretends this subplot didn’t exist. Furthermore, the movie continually asks the audience to suspend more and more disbelief in the preposterous premise. Some techno/bio-speak opens more questions than answers.

Thematically and historically, this movie offers no new material to the horror/sci-fi genre. Recently we have seen THE LOST WORLD and RELIC, but there are countless stories, including the foundational story FRANKENSTEIN, about man creating a monster which returns to haunt him. Director Guillermo Del Toro states, “When mankind allows his ego to balloon as he schemes of gaining total control of the planet, nature steps in to remind us who’s boss.” While it is dangerous for man to play God by trying to create life, Mr. Del Toro is errant in thinking that nature is boss. He constantly reinforces this error in the movie by endorsing evolutionary theories. God is boss, and He told mankind to have dominion over the earth. This movie speaks of its anti-Christian bias when the killer insects take over a church and kill a pastor. A cross over the church stating JESUS SAVES seems to serve as a mockery of the power of God over creation.

It is appropriate and necessary to question man’s medical and scientific endeavors. With cloning becoming reality, it is wise to be reserved. MIMIC tells us that our experiments can go awry, but it relies too much on evolution and stale horror devices to tell its story.