Species Review

 

Horror fans it's almost a month since I talked about something that was without a shadow of a doubt a horror film and my god have I picked a good one to talk about. There's not really alot that I can say about this film but I can say that this is the kind of horror film that you didn't want your parents catching you watching when the film was first on TV and so here is my review of "Species" enjoy the review.

The plot of the movie is a female alien named Sil is on the loose and it's up to crack team of people to get her back before she mates with someone. The plot probably isn't the best aspect of the film since it's kind of dumb even at the best of times and it does require you to suspend your disbelief alot but at the same time the story so enjoyable because of the fact that it's pretty dumb and doesn't take it self to seriously.

Starring in the film is Natasha Henstridge as Sil , Sir Ben Kingsley as Xavier Fitch and Michael Madsen as Preston "Press" Lennox. Also starring in the film is  , Alfred Molina as Dr. Stephen Arden , Forest Whitaker as Dan Smithson , Marg Helgenberger as Dr. Laura Baker , Voice acting legend Frank Welker as The Voice Of Alien Sil , Michelle Williams as Young Sil , Whip Hubley as John Carey and Anthony Guidera as Robbie.

I honestly cannot believe how many great actors are in this movie granted this film was made very early on in alot of there career's but still it's impressive none the less. As for what I thought about the acting in the film it was honestly not that bad which given the amount of great actors that are in this film is really not that surprising whatsoever hell even Michael Madsen is good in this film and that's a very rare thing for anyone to say.

This film actually had me asking the question of who the real bad guy of the film is since all Sil wants to do is escape which is fair enough. However all this crack team wants to do is capture and study her for reasons unknown and so when I started to look at it from that point of view I was forced to wonder if the people who are trying to capture Sil are actually the bad guys and hell even the leader of this team treats young Sil more like an object to study rather then a person.

Now if you look at Sil someone who just wants to escape and be loved by someone it makes her look like the good guy. Yes she does kill people but only when she feels threatened and so in that regard she's like a teenager in that she will attack you if she feels threatened by you and that's really something that could have been removed if someone at the facility where she was born and raised actually took the time to care for her.

This film was pretty much a passion project for writer and produced Dennis Feldman who came up with the idea for what would become Species in 1987 when he wrote a treatment when the film was first called The Message. Which unlike the final product would take more a police procedural approach to the story which I don't really think would have worked for this kind of story but luckily the idea would get turned down alot until Feldman wrote a script for the film and re-titled it Species and changed quite a bit from his original approach.

Sadly this is the only film in the franchise that Feldman wrote with all the other sequels being written by different writers. Which is a shame because I do believe he is best writer for this franchise since he knows what would work in that world and what wouldn't where as the other writers are just doing it for a paycheck and not because they have a passion for the world that the film and this franchise is set in or at least I think so.

One of the issues that I have with this film is the fact that's nearly an hour and fifty minuets long which is about twenty minuets to long for this film. This film should have been no longer then an hour and a half long but since it's not we get badly paced scenes with scenes going on for far to long which in turn makes the film feel boring to watch which is a shame because when the film wants to be fun and entertaining it really can be fun and entertaining to watch.

Now I do actually have some memories of watching this film when I was very young I can't say the exact year but I know that it was sometime in the mid to late nineties. As such I can speak from experience when I say that you don't want your parents walking in and catching you watching this film because not only will end awkwardly it will also mean that you won't be able to look your parents in the eye for a while.

Now then boys and girls there are kills and scares in this film and so that means that we have to talk about both of them. In terms of the kills I thought that they were very well done with the film taking full advantage of the fact that Sil is an alien and so your not really limited to what a human can do which makes the kills creative , as for the scares there really wasn't any or at least there wasn't any that scared me.

Overall yes this is a dumb movie the premise alone should tell you that but at the same time it's also an enjoyable movie. That doesn't mean however that the film is without fault because trust me it has plenty of them it just means that despite those faults many of which i've discussed in this review the film is still pretty enjoyable and fun to watch as such this film gets a 6 out of 10 from me and no i'm not covering or planning to cover the Species sequels.

All the images that I used in this review were gathered from either the official Species fandom wiki page or Google Images. I have to say that I honestly wasn't expecting to find any high quality images from this film and while alot of them are fairly low quality there are a few that are shockingly high quality and those are the images that I got from the Species fandom wiki page as such I have no choice but to recommend the official Species fandom wiki page if you want high definition images from either this film or the franchise as a whole and as always we end this horror review as we always do with our true goddess Elvira wishing us all some very very unpleasant dreams.