Knotted Undies
Dr. Daniel's review of Mimic

in for observation

Starring Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Josh Brolin, Giancarlo Giannini, Alexander Goodwin, Alix Koromzay, F. Murray Abraham, Norman Reedus.

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Rated R.

   Okay, here's the deal. When I was a tyke, I was a sponge for those "atomic nightmare" flicks, those sci-fi movies 'bout nuclear testing that made "gargantuan mutants" out of ants, spiders, grasshoppers, and big bald-head dudes in the desert. I caught 'em all at the Thunderbird Drive-In, double features, of course. I saw Clint Eastwood drop that bomb on that tarantula, even though I had no idea who Clint Eastwood was at the time (neither did Hollywood, for that matter), and I cheered as the eggheads teamed up with the marines to save the world in glorious black and white. They were inane, they were cheap, and they sported some of the cheesiest rubber-legged monsters ever. I loved 'em!
    That's why I waited so long to see Mimic. I had a wonderful memory of those critters, and their "evil threat," and I didn't want to see them redone. It's silly, I know, but, as bad as those cheddar efforts were, they were a testament to another time, when we were all so scared of "the Bomb" that we cozied up with every bad radiation boogey-thing we could conjure. Personally, huge bugs held very little threat to me. Hey, I grew up in a small Georgia town, remember? We grow waterbugs down here big enough to order a blue-plate special at the Carver Point Diner and put a quarter in the jukebox. What do I care about big ol' bugs?
   Well, when Lula June Dover cancelled our date to the VFW Dance-Off due to a corn on her left heel, I found myself down at the Cineplex Marathon staring at the marquee. The choices were slim to slimmer. The Game and Money Talks were sold out, I'd already seen Air Force One and G.I. Jane, and Theaters Four & Five were still gutted from last month's imitation butter flash-fire. I was left with Fire Down Below and Mimic. I'm sorry, but I just can't bring myself to see the new Steven Seagal effort. The title makes me think of jock itch, and I can't risk the chance of seeing Seagal spraying Cruex on his privates for 90 minutes. So I was left with the bug flick. When all was said and done, it worked out just fine, as Mimic did its job: it entertained me on a lonely Friday evening.
   See, some sort of virus is making all the kids in the Big Granny Smith deathly ill. The virus is carried by bugs. So, bug doctor Mira Sorvino develops a new breed of bug to kill those other bugs. Those new bugs kill the old bugs, then they're supposed to go belly-up. But they don't. Instead, these new bugs begin to mutate. They develop the ability to mimic (get the title now?) humans. They grow a shell that resembles human faces, and they can wrap their wings around themselves to make it look like they are folks standing around in a trenchcoat. Oh, and did I mention these bugs are about six feet tall? A Carver Point Waterbug on stilts, as it were.
   The superbugs are shacking up in the sewers and abandoned subway stations of Manhattan, and, now it's up to Lovely Mira Metermaid and Jeremy Northam to track 'em down, stamp 'em out, and clean up the residue with a wetnap.
   Let's not get carried away here. Mimic ain't no Oscar vacuum; it ain't even Golden Globular. I will tell you, though, that Mimic should get the highest honor imaginable for its devotion to the "bug hunt" genre. It puts extra grease on the roller coaster wheels. It offers some super suspense, and, it serves up the gross-out better than a middle school cafeteria worker. If there's a comparison to be made, it'd have to be the original Alien. Things popping out of the darkness, juicy kills, those slow turns to face the evil about to make a Milk-Bone out of you. All here.
   The kicker here, though, is, while you've seen it all a hundred times before, you've haven't seen it executed this perfectly since Ridley Scott took us into deep space with Sigourney and John Hurt and his little chest-bursting friend Elmo. Director Guillermo Del Toro knows atmosphere shots better than most horror directors in the business. His Cronos is still one of the best low-budget vampire movies ever. He knows how to plow the darkness for its best dirt, and, miracle of miracles, he can use shadows for substance in a Technicolor world, a feat hardly anybody can do anymore. Here, Del Toro reads from every cliché in the book, but he does it with such style that you don't mind. It's like playing a Beatles album; you've heard it a million times, but it's so well done that it still cooks.
   The script is laughingly dumb, but deep down inside, isn't it supposed to be? I know it hurts to see Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham say things like, "This was not just some....random mutation!" But go back and hear some of the horrible dialogue from Tarantula and Them!, and you'll realize the character has to say that to make his point. You want crisp, meaningful dialogue, go watch My Dinner with Andre.
   The cast as a whole has the thankless job of playing second-fiddle to bugs. Pull Mira Sorvino out of this movie, put Jamie Lee Curtis in, and you'd see her Halloween-scream babe. In fact, throw Donald Pleasance in here as Abraham and Northam, and you'd swear John Carpenter was rockin' back in the director's chair.
   All that said, Mimic is still a light in the darkness in the new era of horror movies. God bless Dimension Films for that. This film, paired with last year's fantastic Scream, shows that the horror movie can be still be done right. Both have a nice blend of shock and schlock, a little humor to break the tension, and, best of all, a flashlight from the past to guide them. One can only hope that this trend continues with Scream 2 and beyond.
   When I was a child, I saw things as a child. I saw bug movies as bug movies, nothing more. Now, thanks to Mimic, I see that they can be more. They can be tight, edge-of-your-seat thrillers that make you squirm 'til your underwear knots up. And, after all, isn't knotted undies what we want from a horror movie?