Species

Year 15, Day 303 - 10/30/23 - Movie #4,579

BEFORE: The voice of Frank Welker carries over from "Eight Legged Freaks". At least he got credited in the IMDB for the alien sounds he made for this film.  On yesterday's film he was listed in the screen credits for "special vocal effects", and I had to go to Wikipedia to prove that included the sounds of one particular giant spider.  The judges have ruled that this was enough evidence to prove his voice was used in that film, however they ruled against "Graveyard Shift", where he allegedly did the voice of a giant bat.  But since there was no credit for that at all in the IMDB, I just couldn't prove it, so I decided to drop that film from the chain, because if I don't have proof that the chain is solid, then, is it?

It's a shame because that film, based on a Stephen King story, doesn't link to anything else on my list right now - so I don't know when, or even if, I'll be able to program it.  But hey, there were too many films in the 2023 chain anyway, and also too many horror films for this October to hold, so something had to go - why not the film that I wasn't 100% sure connected to the others?  I'll try again next year, "Graveyard Shift", keep hope alive. 

THE PLOT: A group of scientists try to track down and trap a killer alien seductress before she successfully mates with a human.

AFTER: Now here's a film that exactly proves the point I was making just the other day - after watching "Swamp Thing", which really was just one extended chase scene, over and over, until there was a bit that was different at the end, but very weird. "Species" is really just one big chase scene, also - the human/alien hybrid escapes from the lab, a team of experts is put together to hunt/kill her, so they chase her to the hotel, they chase her to the club, they chase her to some guy's house, and always, always they're one step behind - they find the bodies of her lovers/victims but she's always JUST left the scene.  You'd think after a while this would get tedious, and you would be right. 

Oh, sure, they try to distract you on two fronts, either by having the woman get naked or having her turn into a disgusting monster-thing, take your pick, name your poison.  Are you turned on or grossed out, or maybe a little bit of both?  You sickos....  But then they just have to repeat the pattern again and again until they get close to the 100-minute mark, and then it's time to wrap things up.  Once again, it's down to the weird underground cavern or mine, where things are either explosive or flammable - it's symbolic of hell, sure, I get it - but then twice this month those underground caverns weren't just symbolic, they led to ACTUAL hell.  Maybe that's the running theme for the month - "R.I.P.D. 2", "Barbarian", "Jeepers Creepers", "Antlers", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife", "Overlord", "Eight Legged Freaks", and now this one - they all had underground caverns or mines or tunnels under houses, evil always lives or comes from down below, get it? 

Unless, of course, evil comes from up above - as it did in "Dark Skies", or "The Fog", or also this one, where humans got a response from their Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, and it was a broadcast from space with a DNA sequence.  You see, twenty years before, mankind started sending out signals with information about the human race, including our DNA pattern.  (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?). And so when a message came back with a response, the natural inclination was to mix that DNA information with human DNA, just for kicks, you know.  Je-SUS, why don't we just send the aliens a bunch of recipes for how to cook humans once they get here?  I bet we're totally delicious and filled with all the nutrients they lack on their home planet. GOD, we're so stupid.  Sure, the aliens sent us a formula that would solve the energy crisis, but let's ignore that and instead build a creature with this DNA sequence they sent us. WTF?

The scientists create this human/alien hybrid, which they realize has strange powers and could easily get out of control - so they try to kill their genetic experiment, but it's too late, she's already too powerful and she uses her powers to break out of the lab and sneak aboard an Amtrak train for Los Angeles.  Yeah, that tracks.  If she's comfortable doing full nudity she should go far in movies, at least until she turns 30.  Oh, bad news, she also ages very fast, so yeah, she better get that acting career going while she can.  

Oh, wait, it's too late because now she really wants to mate and have a baby - boy, that was a short acting career, but again, this also tracks.  Every young actress wants to get to L.A., do a few nude scenes (as long as they're artfully done) then land a husband and start a family.  But then she keeps getting spooked and killing the men she picks up at the club, so this relationship thing sure seems to be hard for her to get the hang of.  Can somebody please tell her what she's doing wrong?  You sleep with the guy, you marry the guy, you get him to sign a life insurance policy, THEN you kill him.  It's really not difficult, but remember, she grew up in a lab, so she just doesn't know any better. 

Meanwhile that team of "experts" (one's essentially a mercenary hitman and another one is an "empath", so yeah, at least half of them are probably bogus) is closing in on her, but they're led by the head of the government team that created her, and I think really he's more concerned with erasing his mistake and not creating a government scandal than anything else.  The British anthropologist guy has the hots for the female molecular biologist, but she seems more enamored with the tough-guy mercenary.  Yeah, this also makes sense, the woman overlooking the nerdy scientist because she's drawn to the "bad boy" killer.  But if she had given the nerdy scientist a chance instead, obviously their quest for the alien hybrid might have been more successful.  Just saying. 

Instead, there's a car crash and the team believes that the body in the car is Sil, the alien hybrid.  But it's not, it's a woman that Sil kidnapped and held hostage, probably for this exact purpose.  Sil then cut off her own thumb and left it at the scene, so the scientists would think she was dead. Really?  Gotta call a NITPICK POINT here, the molecular biologist tested only the thumb that was inside the purse to confirm the identity of the dead body?  Did she not notice the corpse had two thumbs, and therefore there were THREE THUMBS present at the accident?  No, let's not test the dead body for alien DNA, but let's test this extra thumb that we found inside a purse in the car instead.  Ridiculous.

NITPICK POINT #2 - after another failed attempt to catch up with the hybrid, the government guy determines that the team should go back to the nightclub and look for her there again.  Sil was in a car at this point, saying the exact same thing he was - for a minute I thought she had psychic powers and was giving him a mind-push to go back to the club, but then in the Wiki plot synopsis it says she was reading his lips.  I guess that's correct, because she didn't have psychic powers at any other point in the movie, but it's so unclear what's happening this way, couldn't she just have super-alien hearing and learn the information she needed from a distance, just by listening?  Instead of reading his lips and saying the same thing out loud, which nobody does?

Then Sil catches up with the team when they go back to their hotel - and the biologist REALLY wants to get it on with the mercenary guy, so he goes to their room. Sil listens in, because she's REALLY curious about this whole sex thing, and what she maybe has been doing wrong all this time.  But then as she's watching/listening from the room next door, JUST before she figures it out, the British anthropologist returns to the room she's in, and for some reason he doesn't recognize her (because really, he never got a good look at her the whole film, and also, her hair color is different).  So, naturally they start having sex, as people do, and she's really, really going to get it right this time - just kidding, she kills him too.  But at least this time she waited until AFTER sex to kill her partner, so maybe she is learning something, after all.  

The team then tracks her down in that underground cavern, where she's already given birth to a son (geez, that was fast...) and also mutates herself into an alien-looking thing with some kind of armored shell.  Yeah, but humans have guns and fire on their side, so we're GOING to win.  We simply can't have an alien female running around killing all her sexual partners, before or after getting pregnant.  And we CERTAINLY can't have her son grow up and start impregnating women all over the place, that's how the alien race takes over, right?  The invasive predatory species wins by both killing humans and also using them for breeding, until there are more of THEM then there are of US.  

I can't help but think this is all some kind of metaphor for something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Immigration? Racism? Sexism toward promiscuous women? Or just plain old alien xenophobia?  If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em, or something like that. What's the lesson here, is it keep the Earth safe from aliens, or maybe stop sending out our genetic information and exact location to outer space, maybe? 

Also starring Natasha Henstridge (last seen in "Bounce"), Ben Kingsley (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Michael Madsen (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), Alfred Molina (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Forest Whitaker (last seen in "Street Kings"), Marg Helgenberger (last seen in "Almost Friends"), Michelle Williams (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Scott McKenna, Virginia Morris (last seen in "The Bonfire of the Vanities"), Esther Scott (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Shirley Prestia, Herta Ware (last seen in "Practical Magic"), Melissa Bickerton (last seen in "Saving Mr. Banks"), Lucy Rodriguez (last seen in "Deception"), Gary Bullock (last seen in "The Handmaid's Tale"), William Bumiller,  Anthony Guidera (last seen in "Armageddon"), Caroline Barclay, Matthew Ashford, Whip Hubley (last seen in "A Very Brady Sequel"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Jeepers Creepers"), Richard Fancy (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Marliese Schneider (last seen in "Thirteen Days"), Dendrie Taylor (last seen in "Antlers"), Kurtis Burow with cameos from Jellybean Benitez (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Coati Mundi (last seen in "On the Road").

RATING: 4 out of 10 stolen credit cards (OK, that makes NITPICK POINT #3, doesn't anybody in the film check the name on her credit card at any point?)