Starring Mira Sorvino, Jeff Northam, Charles Dutton, Josh Brolin, F. Murray Abraham, Giancarlo Giannini. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro.
New York City is struck by a plague spread by cockroaches that affects only children, and is killing them off in huge numbers. A young scientist (Sorvino) is called in to help, and she engineers a super bug that eats the cockroaches, and thus saves all the children, receiving a hero's welcome. Although the capability to reproduce was removed from the bug, wouldn't you know it, nature finds a way, and the bugs have survived and reproduced (shades of Jurassic Park). Sorvino, feeling responsible, goes into the subways of New York to find the bugs, and hopefully destroy them with her scientist husband (Northam). A NYPD detective (Brolin) joins them, along with a subway worker (Dutton), and they discover that these bugs are huge (human size), plentiful and intelligent. They get caught among the bugs far below ground by a swarm of these bugs, and the rest of the movie their attempt to escape back to the surface.
The movie borrows liberally from past sci-fi classics. Besides the Jurassic Park premise that nature reproduces chaotically, and attempts to control reproduction will fail, the full sized bugs are given a strong resemblance to the aliens in the Alien trilogy. Plus, like in Aliens, the offspring are born in gooey cocoons primarily stored in one large room near a source of heat. One interesting new touch is that a mask-like appendage covers the bugs face, and this mask resembles the face of a human - its natural enemy. Sorvino is totally believeable as an intelligent, classy scientist, and comes across not like a superwoman fighting the bugs, but as a normal person trying to survive. Dutton is especially good, and the movie comes to life whenever he's on screen. And there is an attempt to to discuss the morality of unleashing a genetically engineered bug upon the world to help save some people, but not fully knowing how that will affect the ecosystem. One problem with the movie, as with many horror movies, is that the characters are made to do a lot of stupid things that we all know will end in their demise. For example, splitting up is a bad thing, but Brolin's detective does so to go back alone and find help, and he of course becomes breakfast for a big bug. And the movie tries to explain how a little bug the size of a computer disc evolves in just three years to become a huge flying man-size insect capable of strategic thinking, but it is quite unbelievable. The biggest problem that the movie, although scary at times, has a lot of flat spots where nothing much happens, and that decreases the suspense quotient. Horror movies are not my favourite genre (although I very much liked Scream and Alien), and I probably wouldn't have gone on my own, but friends of mine won free tickets to a preview. Mimic is better than the usual schlockfests, and horror fans may enjoy it.
