Species: The Awakening

Species: The Awakening

Species: The Awakening

Species: The Awakening

And so we reach the fourth, and final part of a series that never deserved a first sequel, let alone three of them. The slim storyline was told in its entirely in the first movie, and the next three have just been poorly thought-out remakes, redos or continuations of the same situations. This one follows straight-to-video B-movie territory from beginning to end, bringing everything down to its lowest common denominator. There's a misguided but decent scientist hero – Ben Cross, looking embarrassed to be here, a pretty young and nubile actress, Helena Mattsson, whose acting skills are extremely limited, some monster suits and some very bad CGI effects. The storyline kind of meanders from place to place without ever progressing. There's some experimental stuff in a laboratory, more scenes of the alien women on the prowl searching for a mate, and other aliens besides who kill people with their long CGI tongues. The script is very poor and the performances poorer, and there's no decent action or gore to speak of. Just nudity, and even that gets boring after a while, so I really do hope this is the last we'll see of the Species films

The scientist Hollander has got a beautiful niece, a very intelligent girl named Miranda (Helena Mattson) who starts teaching at university while she still is rather young. But when she becomes ill, Hollander reveals he's not her uncle and takes her to a lab in Mexico because that's where she was created - from alien DNA. The revelation of her origin is shocking, and Miranda starts to ask questions about ethics which are difficult to answer. Helena Mattson clearly is the most talented actress among the female aliens of the series (Henstridge may have more charisma, but not as much versatility), because in these scenes Mattson is very believably moving from shock to guilt - and onwards to the inhuman superiority of a higher developed species. If this had been shot in the 1950s, it probably would have been entitled "I Walked With A Teenage Alien". I had low expectations, since the same franchise was being exploited for the 4th time, but the movie manages to be creative enough to put its own stamp on the saga. In the second half of the movie, the makers give in to the expectations of the audience with more fights (including a spectacular alien vs alien death-match), but until then, it was really clever, playing more than its predecessors with the idea of "shall we do that just because it can be done?". Somehow the religious symbolism didn't fit in - the Mexican alien is disguised as a nun and hit by a huge cross once - because aliens obviously have no connexion to earthly traditions like that. That's more for "The Omen", "The Exorcist" and such like. I voted 8/5/6/7 for the 4 parts of the series, which means: if you know only the original, but none of the sequels, I recommend you try at least this one.

I got this DVD and hoped it might entertain me on an average level and that my friends would love it. I think I realized from the start this was a sex monster plot and designed to attack the wankie teen audience. It is the male aged 10-15 I think must be the top raters of this rather sad attempt at cinema. What did I like? Well, the fight between the female Medusa aliens was cool. The sex and more sex scenes very low rated. Perhaps a 50 year old man has as his fantasy being raped by an aggressive female monster, but Somehow this just left me cold. The plot was cheese and full of holes. The acting was so bad, I could have thought I deserve an Academy now. But, I being a sci-fi buff of sorts, had to keep wondering, after the lab burns, how many more of those things are out there. Having some mercy on their audience, they didn't pan to a million other morphing monsters, just ready to breed. We can rest assured they are dead, until the next grade D sci-fi- clone of Species is produced.

i can't say this is an awful movie.it's just that it is so slow.until the last 15 minutes,nothing much happens.there is very little excitement,and i didn't find the storyline compelling.nor were there any great characters.there is some nudity,which doesn't really bother me.i am a guy,after all.and though there isn't a lot of profanity,what profanity there was,i felt was unnecessary and did not have any context in the movie.i don't mind profanity,but there should be a purpose or reason for it.but there is some good news.the special makeup and creature effects were pretty good overall.the acting was OK.and this movie is certainly better than the unfortunate Species 2.i don't think it's as good as the original Species,and it's certainly nowhere near as good as Species 3,which to me,is the best of the series.to me,this movie is somewhere in the middle.i give Species:The Awakening 5/10

Got see Species: The Awakening today and it was about as expected considering it is the fourth movie in the franchise ,a bit of a letdown from Species-111 but I could not say it was a bad movie. The acting was OK and associated special effects,definitely not a big budget movie and definite shortage of lighting for the most part. Helena Mattsson did not quite seem right for the part of Miranda,it was as though she was an understudy for Nicole Kidman with the soft voice and all associated gentle movements until it was time to be ugly, however I enjoyed it anyway for what it was,a good B grade Saturday afternoon entertainment movie.

One day, college professor(yeah, right... she's about as convincing as a dummy) Miranda falls ill. She is then told by her "uncle"(who now admits that he is not related to her) that she was a science experiment of his, of combining alien and human DNA. Yes, like in the original. Only no cocooning, seemingly no sped-up growth, and she had no idea until she suddenly transformed... apparently because she was dying. Which makes it kinda strange that she's still powerful. This takes several good ideas, including that of someone's memories being a lie repeated until they accepted it and themes straight out of the story of Dr. Frankenstein and utterly *wastes* all this potential. The acting and production values are the level of a soap opera, as another reviewer notes. Locations are dull, lighting is poor, and the camera is constantly trying to fake tension(of which there is none to be found in the entirety of this) by shaking/excessively moving and using close-ups(something that only renders these horrendous performances even less tolerable). The dialog is just plain bad, and flat like the great plains. We get additional instances of "learning without opening the book", something that was idiotic when it was introduced in the third(that this does not, by the way, follow up on the sequel-baiting ending of). There are countless questions raised by the cheese(Swiss, by the way) that is the plot, and none of them are attempted answered. As if all of that wasn't enough, the creatures in this pose. They attack with no reason, and usually with their tongue(what a lack of creativity). One of them initially appears dressed as a nun. I'll let that sink in. We see them too much, for long periods of time, and the guy who's making them in this isn't worried about them in the least(so why should we be?). Oh, and he earns a living cloning dead pets(and apparently people, as well? And combining them with the extra-terrestrial genetic material, in spite of the fact that that's probably tougher to do than simply making a direct copy), so surely no one will be suspicious of him when bodies are found murdered under strange circumstances(and this seems to be a common occurrence, based on what takes place during the events of this). The characters are bland, stereotypical, and/or completely uninteresting. I couldn't care about anyone in this, at all. Hollander is inconsistently written. FX are cheap. There is slow-motion during a fight sequence. In a monster flick! There's hardly any nudity(granted, the chicks are hot... still, when they strip, it tends to be covered or they shoot around it), sex, bloody, gory violence or strong language. This is the stupidest and worst of the Species series, and it is also the only that doesn't lend itself easily to being followed by another entry, so perhaps it can end here. Let's be honest, only the '95 one was worth the time. I recommend this solely to those who won't heed the warning. 2/10

OK I was hoping that the fourth Species installment would be good, but I was truly surprised that it was this good. After seeing the second and third one, I thought I was convinced that they couldn't make another one that would match up to the original with Natasha Henstridge but I was wrong because this one came very close. The story is very entertaining and there are some good sequences of violence too unlike number 3. I was really entertained by this one because I watched it at like 3 in the morning and I watched it all. Overall I give it an 8 out of 10 because it was the best since the original and it is a great thriller. I would recommend it to all fans of the Species movies and of course to all the sci-fi fans out there like me.