We Come in Peace -- NOT!

I should warn you, before you read this review, that Species is not my type of movie. I knew before I saw it that it wasn't going to be my type of movie. But then again, I thought I knew before I saw The Sixth Sense that that wasn't going to be my kind of movie either, and I wound up loving it. So my initial impressions can sometimes be faulty. But this was most assuredly not the case in this film.

I watched Species last weekend with my brother, who would be going off to college in a few days (he's there now). I had no interest in seeing it, thinking that it was just an extraterrestrial horror movie, but I agreed to sit down and watch it with him. I really don't think my presence added much, though. I spent too much time with a blanket pressed firmly up against my eyes...

Species begins in a scientific laboratory, where a young girl encased in an airtight observing room is about to be gassed. I suspected that she was some sort of alien but wasn't sure until I saw her great escape, wherein she leaps through the glass, or plexiglass, or whatever like a dolphin and streaks out the door. And as I watched the terrified child run off into the night, I felt sorry for her, and I figured maybe this movie wouldn't be so awful. Maybe it would be kinda like a mix between The Fugitive and E.T.... But I soon discovered that the main character, played by Natasha Henstridge, is no one to be pitied.

As she flees to the west coast by train, a team is assembled by Dr. Fitch (Ben Kingsley) in order to track down the human-alien hybrid and kill her. Assisting him in his quest are an empath (Forrest Whittaker), a professional assassin, and a couple of scientists. Their quest leads them to LA, where they're going to have quite a mess on their hands because their little girl has grown up and they have no idea what she looks like.

They soon manage to sniff out her trail, but catching her is quite another matter. Meanwhile, she is wreaking havoc on the city as she tries to find a suitable candidate for a procreating partner. She winds up killing just about everybody who is nice to her, plus a couple other folks. Don't get too attached to anybody in this movie. A few do make it to the end, but be on your guard.

This is not a pleasant movie. There is some profanity in it, though not quite as much as I would have expected. But the violence and eroticism more than make up for the sometimes decent language (though decent dialogue rarely comes into play here). After the initial period of feeling sorry for the poor little girl, you quickly realize that there is nothing to like about the alien. She is almost mechanical in her actions and kills with extreme violence and without remorse. Ben Kingsley's character, who I expected to like, is almost as robotic as she is; when a single tear runs down his cheek during the gassing I half-expected sparks to start coming out of his head.

The assassin and the scientists are mildly interesting characters. I found the woman quite irritating, but the adorable socially inept British fellow won my favor and the assassin, played by the foster dad from Free Willy, comes off nicely as a jaded and rather self-involved person.

The only character I really was able to enjoy, the only one who kept me from walking out, was the empath, who was played with doe-eyed sincerity by Forrest Whittaker. Whittaker won my admiration for his role in Phenomenon, and he stands here as the shining star in a dark and dreary movie. Was it his Osment-esque expressions of terror and compassion or simply his skill as a supporting actor? Maybe both? At any rate, I was impressed enough with his performance to bump my rating up a notch. So if you're a sensitive soul like me, watch the movie for him, or don't bother watching it at all -- unless you want to spend half an hour with a blanket over your head.