In the filmography of nearly every émigré director, there is a film that sticks out as less significant, more compromised than the rest: the first American film. Though John Woo did earn fans here with MI:2 and Face/Off, Hard Target was hardly an auspicious debut, and if you were to see The Frighteners outside of the context of Peter Jackson’s other work, you’d hardly believe that he’s one of the most powerful people working in film today. Same goes for Mimic, the American debut for Guillermo del Toro, who had previously scored a cult hit with Kronos but had yet to establish himself as the premiere voice of strange-looking puppet creatures worldwide. Mimic is by no means out of step with the rest of his work, but it contradicts it in a major way, in that at least one major character is more developed than any of the non-human components, which makes the film more involving than most of the monster movies of that era, but considerably less like a del Toro film.
After a virus carried by cockroaches has set upon New York City, threatening to wipe out an entire generation of children, noted entomologist Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) is called upon to address the problem. Her solution? The Judas Breed, a synthesized breed of insect that takes on the form of whatever species it is exposed to en masse. Though designed to die within a generation, the breed emerges several years later, beginning to take the form of the other species that dominates Manhattan island: man. Together with her husband Peter (Jeremy Northam), his assistant (Josh Brolin), and her mentor (F. Murray Abraham), Tyler must seek out the nest in the only place that they would be able to hide: in Manhattan’s cavernous, labrynthine subway system.
In the company of The Relic and Deep Blue Sea, two other entries in the minor surge of monster movies to appear in the late 1990s, Mimic is head-and-shoulders leader of the pack, mostly due to Sorvino’s performance as Tyler. Where other creature features have been content to write off scientists as either reckless madmen or cockeyed idealists, Tyler is fully grounded as a brilliant technician working with forces well beyond her control, with consequences well beyond her foresight. Even before she realizes that she mothered a race of insects that threatens to wipe out the entire human race, she grapples with the scope of what she’s done, and wonders if it is wrong for her to act on such a large scale regardless of the intended effect. She represents precisely the kind of role that people insist Hollywood can’t write for women, and should make more of, but her presence only reinforces the slightness of the material around her.
Though it’s provided the backdrop for many of his films, del Toro’s vision of New York has never been entirely compelling (at least in comparison to his Franco’s Spain). Here, it seems entirely possible that he had never previously visited the city, and gleamed his perspective on it from a mixture of police procedurals and Newsies; most of his alphabet city extras seem like they could have just stepped away from a Bowery Boys serial. But they suffer little by comparison to the villainous insects, whose physiology just plain isn't all that memorable. While one doesn’t necessarily expect much in the way of character for giant bug movies, it’s hard to think of another reason to get del Toro to direct your movie. More than once, the structure and characters seemed designed to deliberately evoke Aliens (one of numerous clear influences), and it’s hard not to think of that film’s menacing nests as Mimic settles into the underground for the entire latter half of the film. The technical prowess is clearly there (this is a surprisingly handsome film, with each subterranean cavern looking distinct from the next), but the combustion that comes from a truly plausible monster, designed and executed to the completion that one would expect of the brilliant Rob Bottin, is not.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The Blu-ray contains a video prologue with Del Toro, as well as a commentary track with him and a featurette called "Reclaiming Mimic", where he freely admits that the film was not what he wanted it to be. On the whole, he seems rather eager discuss Mimic, and is generally open about both his successes and his failures with it (he openly refers to it as a b-movie). The disc also contains two production featurettes, "A Leap In Evolution" and "Back Into The Tunnels", about the creatures and the making-of, respectively. On the more mundane side, there are also deleted scenes, some storyboard animatics, and a gag reel.
"Mimic" is on sale September 27, 2011 and is rated R. Horror, Sci-Fi. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Written by Guillermo Del Toro, Matthew Robbins. Starring F Murray Abraham, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeremy Northam, Josh Brolin, Mira Sorvino.
