Brilliant scientist, Doctor Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) and her husband, Doctor Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam), deputy director of the Centres for Disease Control, team up in New York City where, to all appearances, they successfully eradicate an epidemic threatening the lives of scores of children.
Doctor Tyler successfully recombines the DNA of various species to create a biological counteragent to the carrier of the disease. She calls this new species the Judas breed and with Doctor Mann's assistance introduces it into the bio-system of New York City.
Three years later, what seemed like a stroke of genetic engineering genius has come back to haunt them with a vengeance. Their cure has taken on a life of its own. They've altered the balance of nature, and nature is striking back.
Natural evolution has always had a way for prey to outwit its predator. As a defence mechanism, creatures have learned to camouflage themselves to look like their hunters: a butterfly's wings take on the appearance of an owl's eye, a caterpillar assumes the markings of a snake. This is the process of mimicry. Now their creation from the lab has come to live beneath the city and begun to mimic the most dangerous predator of all - humans. In a horrifying turn-about, the hunter has suddenly become the hunted, and the only people who can stop it are the same pair of scientists who accidentally started it, leading to a gripping, action-packed atmospheric science fiction thriller with terrifying consequences.
Special Agent Matti
Don't get me wrong, Mimic is often tense and exciting, and there's lots of slime and blood and stuff, but it falls down on its predictability, its second rate special effects, and its middle americanism. Monsters in the New York subway created by silly scientist come back to haunt her and she and her husband are the only ones who can save the world. The innocent child has to be saved but the smart-arsed African-American cop can die. and good guys are allowed to make miraculous escapes to ensure a happy ending.
With regards to computer generated effects, I believe that certain sections of the filmmaking community have come to rely on them a little too much. And there are a lot of dodgy practitioners out there. Of which I am sure you are well aware. And the really big CGI FX never quite come off, do they? And why do they always cover everything with slime? In Ghostbusters it was funny. Once. But now it seems a monster can't be scary without it. Or is it an eternal adolescent wet dream?
M (Horror theme, medium level coarse language)
106 minutes (1:46 hours)
VHS retail: 10 September 2001
DVD retail: 12 April 2003