SPECIES
A film review by Paul
Copyright 1995 paul@techno.discordia.org
Back in the 70s, a message was sent into space specifying Earth's location, and its DNA pattern. In the 90s, a reply was received from an alien source. One of the reply was to a technique to graft alien DNA to human DNA. The result is a cute blond hair girl Sil. When the director of the project decided to terminate Sil. Sil escaped, demonstrating inhuman abilities. Now Sil is on the run, seeking to escape her captors, and to breed.
SPECIES is similar to those old sci-fi movies like the Humanoid, where the alien or monster seeks to breed with humankind. The twist in SPECIES is that the alien monster is female, and seeks to be inseminated. Due to Sil's lack of social training, Sil's attempts to breed are humorous, rather than exploitive.
The pacing of the movie is pretty good. There was enough action to keep the story going. The acting on most part were credible, though I feel that most of the characters were a little dead.
The story is the weakest part of the movie. So Earth finally gets a message from an alien civilization. Since communication and transport over light years are unfeasible, one logical solution is to grow an ambassador. In SPECIES, the "ambassador" turns out to be nothing more than a very cunning predator. There is nothing more provocative, just another hunt down the alien before it destroy the human race. BORING!
Overall, species is an okay action film that's worth a look. It's not very good science fiction though.
Paul upsiu@mcs.drexel.edu
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