Species

Despite the ridiculous premise and casting this is still a pacey little sci-thriller. Read full review

Species is a pretty good Boo! movie. It's not the kind of sci-fi film that's going to give Stanley Kubrick any sleepless nights, and it may not give the rest of us much sleeplessness either. Its primary purpose in life is to unleash a lot of gloppy morphing and mutating and make us go -- all together now -- eeeuuuh. [07 July 1995, p.F8]

I can imagine a film in which a creature like Sil struggles with her dual nature, and tries to find self-knowledge. Like Frankenstein's monster, she would be an object of pity. But that would be way too subtle for Species, which just adds a slick front end to the basic horror vocabulary of things jumping out from behind stuff. Read full review

If Species sounds ridiculous, it is -- though as ridiculous science fiction films go, this one has its moments. As usual, these moments come early. Read full review

The direction by Roger Donaldson is facile and understated, as is, for the most part, the script by Dennis Feldman. Even the actors pitch in to play down the silliness of it all. Read full review

A shameless Alien rip-off (it even uses a similar typeface in its ads), it makes no sense whatsoever. But don't hold the movie's utter unoriginality and brainlessness against it. A few laughs, a few popcorn-jolting scares—what more do you want on a hot summer night? Read full review

Alien meets Basic Instinct in this textbook illustration of what happens when millions of dollars' worth of technical expertise is brought to bear on a cheap, exploitative script. Read full review

It doesn’t help that the special effects are second-rate; the squishy primal horror of Alien has been replaced by a kind of mechanized yuckiness. The team of B-movie scientists tracking the monster includes Ben Kingsley doing his over-deliberate American accent, Alfred Molina sporting a haircut that’s scarier than the creature, and Forest Whitaker as an empath so sensitive he can’t let anyone sneeze without making a dewy-eyed psychic pronouncement. Read full review

If you go in expecting a serious, no-nonsense chiller in the Alien vein, you'll come away disappointed. Despite its big-name cast and dead-serious tone, Species is a spiritual throwback to 1950s cheesy sci-fi flicks like It Came From Outer Space and It Conquered the World. [07 July 1995, p.4G]

Species carries the whole idea of the erotic thriller--that '80s yuppie genre that mixed sex and slaughter--past cliche into howling absurdity. Read full review

For all its professional sheen, Species is a film that mistakenly believes it is smarter than the audience, scarier than any movie before it, and completely original. It's enough to make you laugh, if the filmmakers ever gave any impression that we're supposed to do that. Instead, we sit through 111 minutes of box office staples - sex, violence, more sex, more violence - and keep track of the better movies that Donaldson rips off. [07 July 1995, p.9]

The director, Roger Donaldson, best known for the Kevin Costner thriller No Way Out, keeps the film moving. But there is only so much suspense he can generate from this stock story and familiar-looking special effects. Species may work best for viewers who don't like to be too scared by horror movies; it's reassuringly familiar. Read full review