MIMIC

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STARRING: Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Alexander Goodwin, Giancarlo Giannini, Charles S. Dutton, Josh Brolin

1997, 104 Minutes, Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro

Mimic’s plot starts off vaguely interesting: an incurable disease which kills off small children is ravaging New York. The only way to stop it is to destroy the carriers of the disease, namely cockroaches. This is done by genetically engineering a new insect specie (called the Judas Breed) whose excretion will kill off the cockroaches. (Not a bad idea at all, especially if you have ever had to cope with a plague of the nasty little buggers.) The plan works and the disease is prevented from spreading any further. But then, three years later . . .

Okay, deep breath: three years later, not only hasn’t the specially engineered Judas Breed refused to die ("Nature will find a way," as the Jeff Goldblum character kept muttering throughout Jurassic Park), but has also evolved into giant six foot insects capable of mimicking man, which we are told, is its natural enemy.

Uhm, okay. The man-interfering-in-nature-with disastrous-results is nothing new to science fiction, but Mimic isn’t really a science fiction movie. It is a big bug movie in which the film’s characters are chased about in the New York underground and messily killed. Usually I would say that the plot of films like this doesn’t really matter, but rather rather its execution.

But Mimic remains a big bug movie despite some very atmospheric shots of a rainy and excessively gloomy New York. Its premise and the Alien/The Relic-like way in which the plot evolves remains absurd to the extreme. (Not to mention miscasting bimbo supreme Mia Sorvino as a scientist type, the various plot holes, the interchangeable characters, etc.)