Film

Species (1995)

Director: Roger Donaldson

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A hybrid created from human and alien DNA escapes from the top-secret laboratory of Dr Xavier Fitch (Kingsley); with her accelerated growth and insatiable desire to procreate, Sil (Henstridge, 'conceived and designed' by HR Giger) is a primed mobile sex-bomb. Fitch assembles a team of experts and weirdos to track down and destroy the broody alien babe. Madsen's heartless killing machine, Helgenburger's token female scientist, and Molina's dorky anthropologist join the hunt. But Whitaker's wigged-out 'empath' feels more deeply, and alone can tell the wood from the trees: standing in a wrecked train carriage, he looks down at a dead guard on the floor, then at the slime-oozing cocoon clinging to the wall, before declaring in a hushed voice, 'Something bad happened here.' Like some state-of-the-art remake of Lifeforce, this is every bit as bad as Tobe Hooper's film, but nothing like as enjoyable. Worst is the transition in the final scenes from snatched glimpses of a woman in a rubber suit to some oddly alienating motion-control effects. Floating like the ghosting on a poorly tuned TV, these are far too clean and artificial to be believable or remotely scary. Deserves extinction.

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