Strong and Moving!

Excellent but underrated film

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Not sure why they even bothered making this film. Oh, yeah. I do. The Almighty Dollar - as good a reason as any, I guess.You know a film sucks when you find yourself screaming at the screen, telling the inept characters to do things they're supposed to, not stupid things that simply propel the story along its collision course. There were so many unanswered questions about the story that I don't know where to begin. I'm not even going to attempt that feat here because I'm signed in with Comcast Xfinity and I have only one hour of WiFi. I like how the movie was too cheap to actually show the apartment building burning down, the hospital the sick kid showed up in, the emergency vehicles that carted him off in the first place, etc. (The director got away not showing anything by having the camera kept close-up on the kid's face and by using soundbites of events that should be visualized). The film had a saving grace, however. It clocked in at 87 minutes. Good. Ten more minutes of that ineptitude and I would've had a stroke. And don't even get me started on the creature effects, or the fact that people go missing left and right, and gunshots go off left and right, and nary a police officer is in sight (other than the clown who showed up to bong the sick kid's mother).

Man, this movie sucked sh!t through a straw. First, one has to overcome about more than an hour of nonsensical voyeurism, than - out of the blue - some unrecognizable roaches show up from out of the blue and than, klabbam!, there the pitiful apocalypse: the monsters die and the good guy, his sister and his - to be - lover are miraculously saved and all is well again.I wonder what the producers were thinking. The first two Mimics I liked a lot. For the disgusting effects and the, more or less, tension throughout the pictures, but this third was a bunch of crap. It was actually rather sad, on the filmer's account, to focus on the breasts of Rosy to create some kind of, whatever, image: an American teenage girl, smoking dope once in a while, looking good and showing off her bra. Well, one good thing; she didn't die.This movie made no sense. Whatsoever. I'm sorry I watched it.Dikke Jules (Fat Jules)

I was never expecting to like this direct-to-video second sequel to Mimic half as much as I did. The first movie was pretty good and the second one was terrible. But this was a completely different film altogether. Director/writer J.T. Petty working within an obviously limited budget used it to its full advantage by creating a squalid, claustrophobic setting and spending the money on special effects instead.Most of the film takes place in the cramped apartment of Marvin and his family, sister Rosy and mother Simone. As a victim of Stricklers, the disease that started the Mimic crisis in the first film, Marvin has a respiratory condition that forces him to live in a modified bubble; he can go outside in a limited radius from his apartment as long as he has his oxygen with him. This sets up an effective Rear Window situation where he spends his days looking out the window of his bedroom and photographing the neighbors in the adjoining building and creating a wall collage of all of them and their activities. Karl Geary portrays Marvin well, he is pale and pretty fragile and sympathetic. As Rosy, Alexis Dziena has a less sympathetic part, but does a decent job with it. Amanda Plummer is underused as Marvin's mom.The film impressed me for several reasons. In addition to the wonderfully realized atmosphere of a neighborhood in decay, most of the acting was strong. The special effects are remarkably well done, the Judas bugs are beautifully rendered. There is also an air of palpable dread slowly created by the director. The first killing takes place at the beginning of the film and surprised me because it's a little boy. Most horror films shy away from having kids killed, especially on screen, but Petty went for it here and it is completely effective. Even if you saw the first film the mystery here is brilliant. We know that there are the man-sized Judas bugs at work but you can't figure out how or why or even how many until late in the film in a surprisingly vicious attack in the street involving Rosy and Garbageman (Lance Henriksen in a typically teeth gnashing, wild-eyed role). This leads quickly to an extremely bloody finale.I thought that Petty had some imaginative and clever camera moves and a sure hand as a director. His writing is succinct and evocative, the movie clocks in at just over 75 minutes. While the beginning takes its time to build a mood, it really kicks into gear during the second half and is damn effective. Petty manages to work in some sly humor to offset the grimness of the story. The Rear Window plot line is used to good effect as Marvin watches his sister and new girlfriend Carmen appear to get attacked in the apartment across the way, and then sees numerous other attacks begin around them in other windows of the building. The final scene really shocked me and I had no idea who, if anyone, was going to get out alive and usually in these types of films I can pretty much figure out who will survive by mid- point. Recommended for those who enjoyed Mimic and don't mind a slow beginning that leads to a big payoff in the end.

I can understand why they chose a different style for this installment of Mimic. Too bad I can't understand anything else, such as:Why the honored characters (the bugs) have barely but a cameo appearance, and hardly contribute to the storyline other than they are the "mystery killers"? Well duh.Why the only relationship between the main character (the brother) and the bugs, is that he was one of the surviving children of the plague that the bugs were created for in the first place? Like if it were not for this fact, viewers wouldn't be able to link this installment with the first two.How is the sister's involvement with her drug dealer associate important to the story other than just about everyone in the neighborhood is purported to be a drug user?How is it important that the police officer investigating the killings become romantically involved with the mother? And not waste any time either...Why is the relationship between the brother and the across-the-road beautiful neighbor not carried forward? For that matter, was it important to the storyline in the first place?Sigh. I was left overly disappointed after watching this. I mean Mimic 2 was bad enough, but sheeze, this is so far worse it's not even worth watching to say you've seen it.