Mimic

Ugh. I hate bugs.

Don't worry, I knew what I was getting into with this as Mimic is a Guillermo del Toro film. As the man himself once said, "I have a sort of fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things." Dark this is, and full of bugs...big ass bugs living in the New York underground.

From the beginning...

The newly discovered Stickler's virus is spread by the common cockroach and threatens to kill off an entire generation of children. Then entomologist Susan Tyler introduces a genetically engineered bug, the Judas Breed to kill off the cockroaches. The bugs live in a hive system with only one fertile male and are designed to die out after one generation.

Then, three years later, two young boys want to make a quick buck by selling a collection of butterflies and "the weird bug" to Susan, whom they refer to as 'the Bug Lady'. She recognizes the breed as a mutant of her own creation. Together with her husband, Dr. Peter Mann, who works for the CDC, she wants to investigate in the subway tunnels.

What they find are bugs of unbelievable size, all female, and they are all out to kill them. The Judas Breed has mutated through what is known as mimicry, hence the film title, but this should have taken many generations.

In any case, stumbling through the subway tunnels are Susan, Peter, his CDC colleague Josh (who will meet a nasty end), a subway cop and an elderly gentlemen, who made his way through the tunnels looking for a boy (his grandson?), who seems to be autistic. Together, they not only have to stay alive through the bug infestation and try to make it back to street level, but they also have to kill off the entire species of Judas Breed before it can migrate out of the tunnel systems. Not everyone of the group survives, with the cop heroically sacrificing himself for the greater good, but in the end humanity prevails.

The opening credits are visually stunning and those bugs are really disgusting in any size and state of development.

5/10

Mama

I like a good ghost story. Especially when it is as pretty as this. Sure, it looks goth and is macabre, but I find it pretty nonetheless.

Jessica Chastain (sporting an unfortunate hairdo) stars alongside Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (of Game of Thrones fame) as couple Annabel and Lucas taking care of two little girls named Victoria and Lily. When Luke's twin brother went of the rails five years back, he shot two work associates and his wife and took off into the woods with his two girls. They ended up in a cabin, also inhabited by a ghost, who mainly lived in the wall.

After the ghost did away with the father, the girls spent the next five years there, growing savage and calling the creature Mama. Luke never gave up looking for his brother and nieces and they were eventually found and after spending some time in psychiatric care, were handed over to him and Annabel, while under the watch of one Dr. Dreyfuss, who slowly pieced together the story of this Mama the girls keep referring to.

Unfortunately, Mama came with the girls into the new house and becomes very jealous of Annabel. Luke ends up in a hospital after a fall down the stairs and Annabel is left to fend for herself. She finds out the story Dr. Dreyfuss has pieced together after he disappears while trying to solve the enigma of Mama by going back to the cabin the girls were found in (he doesn't make it out again).

Mama was separated from her own child when held in an insane asylum. She escaped, kidnapped the baby and ended up falling down a cliff with the child. While Mama fell into the water, the baby's blanket got caught on a branch and the two were again separated in death. She haunted the area looking for her baby ever since. Annabel and Luke try to get rid of the ghost by offering the remains of the child, that had been stored away in some government facility because nobody ever came to claim them, as a trade for Victoria and Lily. In the end, they have to make a huge sacrifice.

Some of this is truly scary. One can recognize Guillermo del Toro's producing hand in this.

8/10