For tonight October Challenge Horror Review I’m checking out Guillermo Del Toro’s second feature “Mimic”. The movie was released 3-5 years (depending on the country) after his fascinating new take on the vampire story “Cronos” (1993) and four years before his next movie “The Devil’s Backbone” (2001). This is his take on the big bug monster movie. This is a genre that would include things like “The Fly” and “Aliens”, both from 1986 along with a whole host of giant insect movies from the 1950’s and beyond.
The Unseen
The movie is loosely based on a short story of the same name by Donald A. Wollheim. The basic concept being that there are people that can live in a community that no one ever notices and that one of these people may not even be a person and it would still go unnoticed. This premise is heavily expanded on by Del Torro introducing a scientific explanation for the creatures existence and of course driving the horror and action people expect from a big bug monster movie.
Our primary leads are Jeremy Northam as “Dr. Peter Mann”, deputy director of the DCD and Mira Sorvino as “Susan Tyler” as the genius entomologist who is technically responsible for the horror they are now facing. They are joined by Josh Brolin, Charles S. Dutton, Giancarlo Giannini and F. Murray Abraham along with a future “Walking Dead” legend Norman Reedus (In a minor role). The movie was originally intended to be part of an anthology series of four hour long stories each helmed by a different director. That evolved over time to a full feature, though it wasn’t without issues with Del Torro butting heads with the studio boss and denouncing the final cut of the theatrical release. Though a directors cut did materialize, most of Del Torro’s intentions had remained unfilmed, partially filmed, or simply lost after release.
Judas Breeding
The plot is a little long winded for a monster movie, starting out with a plague effecting the children of New York. The plague is spread by cockroaches and so to deal with the roaches Dr. Tyler uses genetic engineering to create a new breed of roach, called the “Judas Breed” that will eliminate the others. These creatures were designed to only last a single generation so they could do their job and then die off. Naturally that isn’t how things worked out.
While this did save untold numbers of children, it also lead to the rapid evolution of this new breed of roach which would in just three years evolve to radically increase in size and learn to mimic human beings (Including generating a face like carapace). When signs of these creatures start to emerge and Dr. Tyler realizes they are evolved from her creation she begins an investigation that leads Dr. Mann and herself to investigate the cities mostly derelict underground system. Here they realize the scale of the problem they face and must find a way to deal with it.
Swarming Monsters.
This is probably the most generic horror Del Torro has made, but how much of that is down to him and how much down to the studio interference is probably something we will never know. The movie is very heavy on the tropes you would expect from a giant bug monster movie. There are plenty of jump scares and fake outs along with a team all determined to make heroic sacrifices no matter how necessary it actually is. Naturally of course there are plenty of gross out scenes and crawling around in dark tunnels. Actually the tunnels and the insects are very much the kind of thing that seems to fascinate Del Torro.
The design of the creatures is pretty scary and feels like it could easily have been in a Cronenberg film. The initial design concept began with a sketch by Del Torro himself and it is quite clever how they worked in the mimic aspect to it. That said at around the half way point that ability largely becomes irrelevant and it evolves into Aliens without the firepower. This is perhaps the biggest problem, the name of the film and the point of the story it is based off is largely not relevant to the movie itself. While a few insects may be able to pretend to be humans and feed off homeless people in the subway, the swarms of creatures that turn out to be down there would have been so deadly that they’d never need that ability.
Going Nowhere.
While there are quite a few characters involved in the story, most of them really serve not purpose. Probably the most notable is MTA Officer “Leonard Norton” (Dutton) who provides the everyman character of the piece as well as being the teams guide into the underground. The young boy “Chuy” (Alexander Goodwin) survives in the tunnels by his ability to imitate the creatures clicking sounds. This doesn’t really end up especially important to the plot since the team have already smeared themselves with bug insides to hide disguise their presence. The rest of the characters are mostly just there to get knocked off. Of course that is to be expected to some extent in a horror film.
This is largely a theme for the movie, lots of good ideas that basically go nowhere. It is a movie with a lot of potential that is by and large wasted. The virus that started the whole thing off is forgotten 10 minutes later, the mimic ability is redundant by the third act, the strange boy that can imitate their clicking is just there to ultimately be a stand in for “Newt” from Aliens, but is notably less useful. The heroes never really have a plan and it’s only 20 minutes from the end that Susan mentions that there would only be one male (Because she’s been so right about the creatures so far) and they just need to kill that. But then they kill all of them anyway so… Yeah didn’t really matter.
Trust The Science.
On top of this there is the simple fact that none of this really makes any sense. Now to be fair, I’ve watched plenty of those 50’s movies that also made no sense, but when the attempts by “Scientists” to explain the situation sounds so completely stupid, it does take you out of the movie. For example, the suggestion is the Judas roaches evolved to mimic it’s predator… humans. But we aren’t actually their predator, that’d be lizards, birds, hedgehogs and even frogs. So a supposed entomologist calling humans their predators is just… well, dumb. You also have to wonder why they introduced the original batch with it’s one male, I mean just assuming they can’t reproduce but leaving the male there anyway. Not really that genius.
Overall, this film is probably Del Torro’s worst, but that’s not to say it isn’t entertaining. The first half has good ideas and while the second half wastes most of them, it still manages to be a pretty reasonable Aliens knock off. So that leaves this movie where I end up placing a lot of movies with good ideas that just don’t deliver on them and that is a 5.5/10
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