Movie Review--Mimic (The Director's Cut)

"Sometimes an insect will evolve to mimic its predator.  A fly can look like a spider.  A caterpillar can look like a snake.  The Judas evolved to mimic its predator.  Us."

--Dr. Susan Tyler, Mimic

Given that Zack Snyder's Justice League restored its director's original plans earlier this year, it is an especially fitting time to celebrate the director's cuts of other films that were initially distorted by studio interference.  The Director's Cut edition of Guillermo del Toro's second movie Mimic is a fine example of another cinematic project that was later restored in an altered version.  Mimic, in this form, is an unrated movie exploring the unpredictability of nature with a plot about disease and insects.  Forgoing more extreme onscreen violence in favor of an atmospheric story, it excels at slowly revealing its mysteries, just without developing its characters to the point of nuance or significantly greater depth than the bare minimum calls for.

Production Values

For all of its bizarre monstrosities, Mimic: The Director's Cut only shows its insects sparingly in most of its almost two hour runtime, but the practical effects hold up well and are all that is needed to portray the insectoid threat.  The majority of the movie focuses on the human cast as the characters try to figure out what is happening with a sudden appearance of large, aggressive bugs.  Mira Sorvino, a scientist whose solution ends a serious disease, and Josh Brolin (Thanos in the MCU), a character that seems to be a special kind of police officer or detective of sorts, are among the best of the performers.  None of the characters are particularly developed, not even theirs, but their roles are all useful for the plot in some way, and the seeming attempts at humor are far less gratuitous and idiotic than comedy tends to be across all genres in the past few years.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A deadly disease killing children in New York City brought by a surge of cockroaches is abated when Dr. Susan Tyler develops something called a "Judas" bug that secretes a substance which will kill the roaches within hours of contact.  Three years later, a strange creature that at times resembles a giant insect and at other times resembles a human man stalks the city, appearing to children and adults alike.  Two children bring a special bug they found to Susan shortly after, which leads to hear discovering that the Judas insects are still around even though they were engineered to supposedly die within a year and be incapable of reproduction.

Intellectual Content

As Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park would say, "Life finds a way" in Mimic, as the unpredictability of evolution and the resilience of creatures are the clear themes, even if they are not explored in the dialogue beyond a very basic level.  The Judas bugs evolve to have organs like lungs that are not part of normal insect anatomy after the entire species was supposed to die out due to artificial parameters on their ability to reproduce.  On one hand, while something like this is very unlikely to happen, it is logically possible: there is no contradiction in a species, human or not, developing in a way that is unexpected.  The issue is primarily an epistemological one.  Since evolution is a scientific phenomena and scientific events and forces cannot be proven to exist outside of perception and cannot be proven to be perceived as they are, only a fool makes something like evolution, which has no ramifications for almost any philosophical issue if true, a core pillar of their worldview.

Conclusion

Having not seen the original cut of Mimic, I do not know how much better Guillermo del Toro's preferred cut of the movie is than its initial version.  However, it probably is distinctly better--director's cuts are rarely worse than the comprised version a studio might have had great influence over despite director and cast objections.  Mimic: The Director's Cut is in either case neither the best creature horror film of the past 30 years nor anywhere near being a terrible movie.  It has obvious strengths in its atmosphere, effects, and plot despite having somewhat lackluster characters.  This, though, is the weakness of many films across different decades, so it is hardly a flaw of Mimic in particular.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  A man falls and his head is slammed against a can of paint.  Later, evolved Judas bugs are seen attacking people, and there are also dissection scenes or scenes where the innards of one insect are pulled out for use by the protagonists.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "shit," "damn," and "fuck" are used, moreso in the second half.