Species (film)

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Movie
German title Species
Original title Species
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1995
length 104 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Roger Donaldson
script Dennis Feldman
production Dennis Feldman
music Christopher Young
camera Andrzej Bartkowiak
cut Conrad Buff IV
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Species II

Species is an American science fiction film directed by Roger Donaldson from 1995. The screenplay was written by Dennis Feldman . The main roles were played by Ben Kingsley , Michael Madsen and Natasha Henstridge . The film opened in German cinemas on November 9, 1995.

action

In search of extraterrestrial intelligences, a department of SETI sends the Arecibo message . A few years later you get an answer. On the one hand, the scientists receive a blueprint for a machine that allows an unlimited synthesis of methane . From this one concludes that this intelligence is friendly to humanity. Another message contains a DNS code and the request to combine it with the human DNA. 100 egg cells are fertilized, three of which survive. Two of them are frozen and the third is allowed to develop. The result is the girl Sil (internal administrative name: S1L), who has supernatural physical and mental powers.

Sil is now supposed to be killed for security reasons, but she can escape from the laboratory. Sil's creator Dr. Xavier Fitch hires a team of experts to track down and kill Sil before she can reproduce: the media-inclined empath Dan Smithson, the anthropologist and expert on intercultural understanding Dr. Stephen Arden, molecular biologist Dr. Laura Baker and the bounty hunter Preston Lennox.

Sil escapes on a train to Los Angeles . During the journey, it pupates in a cocoon and shortly afterwards hatches as a grown woman. She is looking for a sexual partner in order to be able to reproduce. She finds a possible partner in a nightclub. But he is not alone, and so Sil kills his companion in the toilet. Then she comes to his house with another man, but kills him while kissing because she discovers his diabetes . Fitch's team arrived shortly afterwards. Sil observes the team members from hiding.

A little later, Sil is run over by a car and taken to the hospital. She comes to quickly and her broken shoulder heals incredibly quickly, which amazes the doctors. She leaves the hospital with a helpful eyewitness to the accident. He takes her home with him. When she tries to mate with him, she is disturbed by the search team. She then kills this partner too.

To fake her death, Sil kidnaps a woman and burns her in a car accident. At the scene of the accident, she leaves her severed finger, which will grow back immediately. The search is stopped even though Lennox doesn't believe Sil is really dead. That same evening, Sil seduces one of the team members, Stephen Arden, at the hotel. She kills him when she finds out that she has gotten pregnant.

Sil is pursued in the city sewers, where she kills Fitch. She is later caught and killed, just like her son, who was born after a very short pregnancy. In the last scene you can see that a rat eats a part of the body of the killed Sil and then genetically transforms itself.

background

  • Production costs were estimated at around $ 35 million.
  • The extraterrestrial appearance of Sil and the train from the dream sequence were designed by Hansruedi Giger . Giger was already responsible for the design of the alien in the 1979 film Alien . The train was originally designed by Giger for the film "The Train" (later project title: "Isobar"), which failed due to script problems. As a director were Ridley Scott and later Roland Emmerich provided. Sylvester Stallone and Kim Basinger were traded for the leading roles .

Awards

  • Natasha Henstridge and Anthony Guidera won an award in the "Best Film Kiss" category at the 1996 MTV Movie Awards . This alluded to the scene in which Sil kisses the man and pierces the back of his head through the roof of his mouth with her extended tongue (similar to the inner teeth of the aliens from the film of the same name). Natasha Henstridge was also nominated for the Best Breakthrough Performance category.
  • The film was nominated for a Saturn Award in 1996 in three categories, including Best Science Fiction Film .
  • The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable.

Reviews

James Berardinelli praised the film's special effects on ReelViews. He compared him to the SF thriller Aliens - The Return , which he thought was more successful, and to what he thought was the worse Judge Dredd . Berardinelli wrote that the characters were intended to be clichéd.

“An initially exciting, but then more and more calculable and in the finale failed cross between well-known horror, science fiction and war film motifs. The atmosphere of a universal threat, which was initially built up with good actors and economical effects, loses its effect considerably in the finale due to technical frippery and imposed morals. "

- Lexicon of international film

Sequels

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.imdb.de/title/tt0114508/business
  2. ↑ Film review by James Berardinelli
  3. ↑ Species. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used