A lot of movies have made an attempt at linking sci-fi/horror to science in a tangible way so that even the most implausible plots hold a small tinge of realism: from the T-Virus in Resident Evil, which has since become the default explanation of zombies, to the battery explanation in The Matrix justifying machines reason for eradicating humanity but keeping them alive and hooked up to a super computer made more sense to highly evolved machines than, say, nuclear power. Nevertheless, some movies make more of an effort to explain their scientific method, so to speak, than others and in that regard Mimic really goes above and beyond the call of duty.
I had heard in an interview a while ago that director Guillermo Del Toro was interested in the less explored aspects of monsters and possibly because of that he uses Mimic to explore the entire anatomy and life cycle of his insect-men, an idea which I very much enjoyed. The part of Mimic which is really fun to watch is the exploration and discovery of the enemy, in this case giant mutated insects, which is dissected intricately by a crack team of CDC doctors and an entomologist. The dialogue in those moments is captivating and entertaining and I really felt the desire to know everything I could about these strange creatures so that I might be prepared, just in case I end up in the old abandoned subway tunnels of New York City.
Aside from the interesting biology class, however, Mimic is generic, which is not necessarily a bad thing, especially for a Halloween movie, but it can begin to get annoying after a while. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize I could save myself a lot of time by just skipping this review altogether and just write the word ‘generic’ 800 times and slapping it on my blog: the music could be applied to any slow motion scene, most of the set pieces are uninspiring, the story is what you would expect from the genre, the acting is on par but offers nothing more or less and everything about the direction screams ‘done by the book’ from colors to camera angles.
My old arch nemesis, the Idiot Plot makes an appearance, characters not thinking through choices which, based on their own life experience, they should know will not pan out well. The action is standard and so predictable that I timed my bathroom break so that I could enjoy the slow build up parts and make a run for it when the bugs attacked, seeing as the action was going to be exactly where I expected it to be upon my return which either proves how terribly straightforward Mimic is or demonstrates a sixth sense that I have yet to entirely master.
Mimic also loses points for employing too many children: films seem to find it terribly difficult to produce child characters that are not so annoying that they make you want to exchange the future of the human race for the privilege of never seeing or hearing them again and Mimic is a prime example how this happens. Either the children are too serious, like the first two in this film, and you are left with the annoyed feeling that no kid would act like a street tough junk dealer or you are presented with a faithful presentation of a real child, like the later actor and more principle character in this film, who is annoying, unintelligent and not interesting in the slightest. Despite the fact that Mimic was well over populated with child actors who served no necessary purpose, I will at least give them one point back because they filmed the monsters eating two out of the three: and that ain’t bad.
To be fair, also, to Del Toro, some scenes were picturesque, especially during the plague in the beginning of the film and I also liked the opening credits, though the credits are in fact often outsourced.
I rented this movie from my local library the year after it came out in 1998 and my sentiment today is exactly what it was back then, that this is a good movie if you got it on the fly from the library, or if you are reviewing 31 horror movies and Rosemarie’s Baby was still not back at the TLA.
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