DEL TORO, Guillermo
(Dir.), “Mimic”, Miramax Film Corporation,
1997.
In the time before
“Crimson Peak” and “The Hobbit”, Guillermo del
Toro did really interesting and visceral films, that scare the heck
out of people for all the right reasons. As a director he’s capable
of creating great menace and also great beauty. When he’s on form,
it works a treat; when he’s not – well let’s not contemplate
that. This movie is the quintessential del Toro film. It contains all
of his obsessions and all of the tricks that he uses to make a
statement. The only thing missing here is Ron Perlman.
To begin with, it’s
about insects. Del Toro loves creepy-crawlies. When he did
“Blade 2”, the vampires were less Bela Lugosi and more
bug-like, making for a disturbing and – many would say – somewhat
less than effective take on the old stand-by. My experience of that
film was that most of the audience spent their time trying to get a
better look at the vampires rather than flinching away from them
behind their popcorn. It was probably not the right time or place for
this variation on an old theme. “Cronos”, on the other
hand, was a completely different matter: adding an insectoid
variation to the vampire theme – in the shape of the clockwork
scarab-thingy that infects its owners with the ‘vampire virus’ –
was a stroke of genius and it worked a treat.
Del Toro likes the alien
quality that insects bring to a story and it’s obvious that’s why
he decided to dramatise this story by David A. Wolheim. The inability
to empathise with a bug; the complete dissimilarity to human anatomy;
the strange movements and odd noises: all these things are to del
Toro what the xenomorph was to H.R Giger. The inability to
communicate or relate to the insect makes it a perfect monster for
this type of story. I wonder why – since he’s such a Mythos fan -
he hasn’t thought about trying to do Basil Copper’s The Great
White Space? Plenty of creepy bugs in that story...
Using a favourite motif,
del Toro gives us the backstory to this tale in a series of
flickering montages at the movie’s start. Through a selection of
‘found footage’ and still images, Manhattan Island, we learn, was
afflicted by an insect-borne disease which affected children and
which was named “Strickler’s Disease”. From the fleeting images
with which we’re provided, it looks a lot like polio crossed with
scarlet fever, or diphtheria – either way it’s nasty. By the time
the opening credits are over, we’ve also learned that a cure was
found by targeting the cockroach – the disease’s vector – and
that Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) was the bug-loving geneticist who
found the means to do this. Her answer was to hybridise a mantis-type
insect called the “Judas Breed” which, insinuated into the
cockroach population, not only killed it with its noxious secretions
but would then render itself infertile after six months, thus
eradicating the ‘roaches (along with the disease that they were
carrying) and also the means of deployment. Very tidy; very neat.
However, F. Murray
Abrahams – Susan Tyler’s academic mentor – is there to provide
a timely warning. He might not be wearing a sandwich board declaring
that “The End is Nigh!”, but he certainly has one tucked away at
home, I’m sure. “Nature abhors a vacuum”, he metaphorically
tells his former pupil; The Judas Breed worked as advertised in the
laboratory, but then they let it out, and the world, he reminds her
is a far bigger and less-controlled laboratory. Anyone who’s ever
seen a “Jurassic Park” film knows what’s coming next!
Time moves forward. Three
years on, Susan is now married to her CDC (Centre for Disease
Control) contact from the crisis, Peter Mann (played by Jeremy
Northam). They are trying to have children; however she (it’s
implied) is unable to conceive (why this is automatically assumed,
rather than anyone asking Peter to have his sperm count checked, is
one reason this film bothers me). Then, on an otherwise uneventful
day at the Natural History Museum, two kids show up with a big bug in
a Corn Flakes box: hello, the Judas Breed, supposedly self-immolated
by genetic trickery, has resurfaced and is, against all odds,
breeding.
While all of this is
going on, across town a cut-rate church mission in a condemned
building, is having issues. Something comes up from under the streets
into the basement and chases the reverend up to and off the roof. His
body is rudely yanked into a drain by something very strong and
silence descends upon the streets once more. There is a witness,
however, to these events: an autistic boy named Chuy (pronounced
“Chewy”) has watched everything without understanding its import.
What he notices is the assailant’s “funny shoes”, fixated as he
is on the objects of his single-parent father Manny’s (Giancarlo
Giannini) occupation as a shoe-shiner. Next day, Peter and his
sidekick Josh Brolin (imaginatively named “Josh” in this feature)
are called to the church to check for viral outbreaks. They liberate
the human population from the building and then sweep the locale for
strangeness, which they find in the form of an enormous stalactite of
faeces hanging from the roof in a back room. This is examined and
found to contain a handful of buttons.
Things continue apace and
the clues mount up from here on in. Mira Sorvino’s lab assistant
discovers a bizarre crab-like corpse in a water treatment plant which
turns out to be a larval form of the Judas Breed, complete with
nascent lungs, absence of which is what keeps insects at a swattable
size. The two kids who found the insect go into the subways to try
and find an Öotheca, or egg case, with a promise of good money if
they turn one up: they do, but neither of them gets to claim the
reward as the Judas Breed don’t like their children being disturbed
(they do like human children though, which they butcher and
eat with happy abandon). This is probably why del Toro stands out
from a bunch of other directors in this genre – other film-makers
might have shied away from killing innocent children in this kind of
movie but not Guillermo, and it makes the film much more powerful as
a result.
Next thing we know, we’ve
all joined up with a curmudgeonly transit cop named Leonard Norton
(Charles S. Dutton) and we’ve headed down under the streets to find
out What’s Going On. During the descent we discover that Chuy has
been lured down here as well by “Mr. Funny Shoes” and that Manny,
cutthroat razor and rosary in hand, has come down after him.
Combining forces, we face the nightmare together. Although, it has to
be said, things don’t look so bright because Peter – the same
Peter who headed the scorched-earth take-down of the city’s
cockroach population - asks Susan “what does this bug look like?”
as they head out. Sorry? Maybe he missed the re-cap.
Deep in the subway, it
might be expected that the story will run on well-travelled rails
towards its conclusion, and, to be fair, that is pretty much
the case. It’s the details though which make the difference.
Each of the players has
something different to bring to the table: Susan Tyler knows bugs;
Leonard knows the abandoned subway stations and how they work; Manny
is the tool man, bringing the straight razor, the rosary and the
Zippo lighter, all of which give our little party the equipment they
need to execute their plans. The two CDC guys, on the other hand,
contribute very little, although I’m sure the bugs found them very
diverting. Peter is increasingly marginalised as the narrative
continues: he is unnecessarily abrasive towards Leonard and
constantly undermines Susan’s contributions. It’s as if the only
role left that he thinks he can feasibly play is ‘leader’ and he
has a hard time claiming and owning that position. There’s that old
chestnut that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle and
no-one in this outfit seems to need Peter. Although his annoying
spectacles do come in handy.
This is the element of
the film that bugs me (see what I did there?). There is an assumption
of male superiority all the way through this script. Peter claims
Susan and provides a home for her, despite her ‘failure’ to
provide offspring; she is constantly cosseted in the drama, being
thrown into danger to be rescued, or prevented from engaging with the
threat (despite being the best able to understand what’s going on).
Finally, she gets saddled with an all-consuming protective ‘mothering
instinct’ which sets her on a course to attack the Male - the
insect nest’s only fertile male representative - in order to save
Chuy. Meanwhile Peter gets to confront the myriad Females which
populate the nest and wipe them out en masse in a
Schwarzenegger-worthy fiery inferno. The patriarchal politics is more
than somewhat heavy-handed, no matter how many legs you might have.
There are nice
bait-and-switch moves in the unfolding of events. The Zippo doesn’t
set off the explosion for example, and the straight razor never gets
effectively used as a weapon. Del Toro sets them up as things to pin
our hopes upon and then renders them ineffective, causing the
characters (and us) to flail about wildly trying to find
alternatives. It’s a nice, clever way to keep the viewers from
getting complacent.
In the end, science and
grim determination win the day. Our heroes get the child that they
thought they’d never have and just enough loose material remains to
set up the possibility of a sequel. In fact two sequels followed
this, the first a splatterpunk gorefest that’s best avoided and the
second a rather piss-poor re-make of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”
wherein the serial killer across the way is actually a six-foot
cockroach that’s eaten the neighbours. Neither are worth seeking
out.
There is a final note I
must make although perhaps del Toro would rather I didn’t. At the
end of the film, Susan and Leonard are the only ones left in the
abandoned subway car: Leonard is bleeding to death and Peter and
Manny have left earlier to enact a plan which will get the subway car
running once more, although - for various reasons - they’ve both
been gone far too long. Susan decides to exit the safe zone and see
what’s happening. They change the plan. Leonard says: “if the car
starts,” (which means Manny and Peter have attained their separate
goals) “I’ll meet you at the end of the platform” (to help her
back into the train carriage). She nods and then opens the door. As
she departs, we clearly hear her call out “Chuy?” into the
darkness. Now, we the audience know that Manny has just found his
lost child and is having a brisk and pointed talk with the Judas
Breed about paternity issues, and Susan has been inside the train the
whole time with no idea as to what’s been going on outside. How
does she know that Chuy’s out there? Why does she call out his
name? I blame an editorial slip myself but I can just imagine del
Toro doing the face-palm thing at the premiere screening.
In the final analysis,
this is a thoroughly gruesome and very entertaining (and scary!)
horror film that ticks all my boxes. It’s way too preachy in places
what with the lack of divine assistance being symbolised by crumbling
Church institutions, ineffective priests, headless Jesus statues and
Madonnas wrapped in plastic (another image that del Toro likes using,
along with shoes) and with the paternalistic attitude of the male
players a constant grinding of axes in the background. However it’s
easy enough to skip over the worst of this. The jewels in the crown
are the insects designed by Rob Bottin, and their ability to mimic
their human prey: the way these creatures have been put together,
you’ll be looking twice at any shadowy, coat-wearing stranger you
encounter from now on!
Four ‘Horrors from me.
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