Mimic A movie review by David Sunga
Starring: Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Alexander Goodwin, Giancarlo Giannini, Charles S. Dutton, Josh Brolin
Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro.
Synopsis: The main character - - scientist Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) - - has genetically engineered a new species of insect and let them loose in Manhattan, confident that the bug colonies will die out because she has programmed the insects to all die off after a few months. Three years later, however, some kids bring Susan a sample of bugs they found in the subway tunnels. You guessed it! The bad news is, some of Susan's bugs are still alive; they have mutated and are living beneath Manhattan in some old abandoned subway tunnels. After going down to investigate, Susan, her husband Peter from the Centers for Disease Control (Jeremy Northam), and some bystanders get trapped in the dark tunnels where they are chased by a colony of man-sized man-eating mantis mutations. Can the humans defeat the hungry bugs?
Opinion: This movie was pretty enjoyable, and not bad for a Saturday afternoon creature feature with good special effects. The first half of the movie paces itself like a normal movie. The scientific jargon sets us up to believe that monsters could theoretically exist, while an ominous human-looking insect (hence the name 'mimic') lurks in the shadows and spies on main characters to build suspense. The second half feels like a 50s teen horror flick, only instead of teens lost in the forest while being stalked, it's Mira and friends lost in subway tunnels, stalked by giant bug creatures. Not bad entertainment.
Possible complaints: On the downside, the movie's plot focus was a little off. For example, the main character and big hero is supposed to be Mira Sorvino, so in a regular movie, you would expect her to blow up all the bugs or at least be a good leader for the human team. Not so. She only gets to kill one bug, mostly by luck, while others characters kill off the colony on their own. The movie spends a good chunk of time focusing on a mysterious young autistic boy names Chuy (Alexander Goodwin), who has the uncanny ability to mimic the language of the killer bugs. But all this skill is for nothing, since the plot never makes use of the kid's ability. Finally during the first half of the movie there's a female scientific investigator on Mira's team, who goes everywhere taking pictures of evidence yet we never see her in the second half. These unfinished threads disappoint but don't ruin the main formula: scientific jargon and suspense in the first half, heroes lost and chased by monsters in the second half, plus explosions.
Reviewed by David Sunga
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