I have to say that, unfortunately, watching this movie was a slightly painful experience. I didn’t really remember the original that well when I watched this film, but I did remember that I wasn’t that impressed with it. I wasn’t that impressed with Mimic 2 either.
From what I remember that plot is basically the same. Mysterious murders are occurring and no one knows why - it ends up being the killer mutant cockroach that was created in the first movie by Mia Sorvino’s character. In this sequel, the only character carried across is Remy, played by Alex Koromzay. Her performance isn’t exactly horrible but I wouldn’t say that it’s fantastic either - there is many a moment in the film when I found myself thinking, `God I wish that big cockroach thing would hurry up and kill her’. I don’t remember what I thought of this character in the original film (I don’t think she was in it for long) but I remembered the performances being a lot better.
There are also other characters in the movie, which seem to be included solely for the purpose of being food for the giant bug-beast. I am a fan of horror flicks - and I don’t believe that the characters really need to be that deep, especially when you know they’re eventually going to be killed by the big bad anyway but this film seems to be going to lengths to make us care for these people, and it just ends up looking pretentious and cheap.
The story itself is pretty simple. Opening scene - an anonymous man carrying a mysterious case is attacked by some horrible unseen beast - accompanied by lots of screaming and screechy sound effects. Remy is then introduced as a primary school teacher who is also an entomologist (thereby our means to discover all the exciting scientific details of the beastie). We are introduced to Remy’s life, which seems to consist of a lot of bad dates, and bugs. She also has some strange habit where she takes a photo of herself after every date she has (she ends up miserable each time for some reason) and sticks it on the inside of her wardrobe, with the guys name written on the bottom. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, maybe just to make her seem complex and interesting? Anyway, a few people get eaten, or dragged away screaming. and then Remy ends up trapped in the school that she works in with a couple of her students trying not to get eaten. We then have the happy/ `oh my god it’s still alive’/ `ahh it’s dead again’ ending.
I’m definitely not one to knock a B-grade movie - some of my favourite scary flicks have been low budget films with horrible acting. Mimic 2 seems to be an attempt at expanding on an idea that was based on a short story, and ends up being a cheap re-hash (though I will admit that a couple of scenes did make me jump - and there was some pretty cool goriness. This sequel was also had a different director than the original, Jean de Segonzac, who seems to have directed mainly cop movies - maybe he should stick to what he knows.
The film was shown in 16:9 wide screen ratio, with 5.1 surround sound. This image quality on this DVD was quite nice; I didn’t notice any graininess or artefacts while watching. The sound was quite good also - all at the right levels in the right places, no points where I was straining to hear what people were saying when there was action on screen. There were also a few extra’s included on the DVD - including a 5 day behind the scenes special (5 random days picked out from the period of the shoot). I have to admit that I got about a minute through the first one before being bored and watching the trailer to the original instead.
Overall I would give this movie 2/5 stars - not bad for a straight to video release, but not something I’d really endeavour to see again.