Tag: Horror

“Mimic,” directed by Guillermo del Toro

Mimic-1997

By Ray Sawhill

“Mimic” is undoubtedly the best mutant-cockroach horror thriller ever made. Even granting that there hasn’t been much competition, this is intended as a high compliment. The director Guillermo (“Cronos”) del Toro’s giddy, elegant scare picture is also a mutant among current movies: it never sacrifices its story or characters to its special effects, and its thrills aren’t extensions of theme parks or videogames. It works on your emotions rather than your nerves.

The script, from a short story by Donald Wolheim, tells a classic nature-takes-revenge-on-us-for-messing-with-her story. Mira Sorvino and Jeremy Northam are scientists who have stopped a cockroach-borne epidemic in New York City by releasing genetically engineered roaches programmed to breed and then die. A few years later signs of a different problem appear: some of the designer bugs may have outwitted their DNA, mutating into scary new forms. The two scientists set out to solve the problem they have created.

A virtuoso at tension and atmosphere, Del Toro orchestrates sounds, shadows and textures with expressionist malice, and sets the action amid damp, vaulted spaces and in tunnels full of forgotten industrial debris — the city as a roach nest. Sorvino, with her air of Yuppie expertise and her face puffy with guilt and fear, is touching as the top bug-fighter. Playing her mentor, F. Murray Abraham hits eerie bass notes. Charles S. Dutton, warm and humorous, is the cop who leads the team underground.

As a yuck!-and-eek! extravaganza, the film is an effective successor to “Scream” — audiences at New York previews have been shrieking, giggling and talking back to the screen. Yet “Mimic” is also a feast for film buffs, recalling such cult favorites as 1985’s “Re-Animator” and the Italian vampire and horror movies of the ’60s. In one long sequence, the investigators take shelter in an abandoned subway car deep under the city. All around are scaffolding and crud; above, far out of reach, beckons an enormous, befogged skylight. The image has the flamboyant poetry that silent movies are still treasured for. Then the giant cockroaches attack. “Mimic” is just an exploitation movie with artistic touches, but it gives us the creeps about all the creatures we share our cities with.

©1997 by Newsweek Inc. Reproduced by permission.

“Visitor Q,” directed by Takashi Miike

visitor q

By Ray Sawhill

The 40ish Takashi Miike is a brilliant maniac who makes four or five movies a year, yet seldom makes more than one movie in the same style. “Audition,” his best-known film, suggests a splatterfest as directed by the meditative Yasujiro Ozu; it’s one of the most horrifying movies I’ve ever seen. “Ichi the Killer” is whirling, sadistic gangster gore; I liked it a lot better than John Woo’s movies, and its virtuosity and flamboyance make poor Quentin Tarantino look like an overdeliberate wannabe. “The Happiness of the Katakuris” is one of the strangest musicals ever made, an attempt to fuse a dysfunctional-family black-comedy with “The Sound of Music.” The elements don’t gel, to say the least, but the film is nothing if not daring.

Though it isn’t in a league with “Audition” or “Ichi,” “Visitor Q” is also well worth a look. It’s a camp comedy about a mysterious stranger who moves in with a screwloose Japanese family. Dad’s a washed-up reality-TV show host who’s desperate for another hit. Sis turns tricks, Bro is routinely beaten up by his chums, and Mom gets a sexual thrill from having her breasts milked. Bodily fluids play a leading role. Sexual encounters of the strangest kind are lingered over.

The film — which Miike shot on next to no money, in a week, on digital video — is like one of John Waters’ grotesque-family comedies, only far more intense. It’s also, at least at first, considerably more bewildering; for the film’s opening 30 minutes, The Wife and I felt completely disoriented. (The Wife, a much more devoted Japanese filmbuff than I am, likes to giggle and mutter “Caucasion not understand” during such opaque passages.) But the film’s storylines finally sort themselves out, and as they do the action becomes ever more nutty and funny.

©2004 by Ray Sawhill