Genres

Visitors Review

2012-05-20 02:42:15

For completists

This review is from: Mimic 3 - Sentinel (DVD) The lack of money shows especially on the 'street scenes'. They're always in the same spot in the middle of the 2 or 3 buildings where all the characters live, in 'the rear window' style. This is OK given the plot's nature, the problem is there are almost no extras and no sound effects of city life either, it's like a post-apocalyptic movie where half the population are dead. The main character's room is under-produced too.Otherwise it's quite entertaining. Strangely, the movie succeeds to hold your interest during the more subdued first and second act, but falls apart in the last act, when all the action and special effects start kicking in. I think this part was ackwardly edited and isn't very effective.The dvd has a good widescreen anamorphic transfer, and the cast's audition tapes make a curious extra.

2012-05-19 17:26:00

Demise of the Series: No Scare, No Logics, and Fewer Bugs

'Mimic Sentimel' is the result of mixing two kind of films -- look how Marvin, a patient confined in a room, watching through a camera the people living in the opposite apartment, AND how he gets invloved with a series of death by the killing human-bugs.While spending time taking photos of the outside, Marvin and his sister Rosie come to think they have witnessed a murder, and call the police. The standard plot device means that the cop would not believe in the story, or at least remain sceptical, and the thrill continues. In this movie, inspted of that, the cop starts to have a date with Marvin's mom (Amanda Plummer). Do you think we need this kind of plot development?Anyway, after while the story strays into the alley, another girl comes into the room, named Carmen, and the two become Nancy Drew-like amateur detectives, and there is a strange man nicknamed 'The Garbageman' (Lance Henriksen, 'AVP' and many others).But you don't see Grace Kelly here, nor Hitchcock's assured hand as director. The film suffers from a very disjointed script, which doesn't know how to scare, or even amuse us. The bad construction of the filmed shots only lead to the confused impression on our side -- actually, we don't know exactly whether some of the characters are killed or not, or how got killed. The bad acting from the leads only lessen the scare, and first of all, you don't see the lethal bug itself very much.The only good thing is the photography that captured the creepy mood of the backyard of a decayed apartment. But the film is another disappointment from Dimention Films that once gave us 'Scream.' And someone please send e-mail address of Tarantino to Amanda Plummer, who was in the epoch-making 'Pulp Fiction.' (You remember that terrific diner scene, don't you?)

Brandt Sponseller 2012-05-16 12:34:27

Roach Window

Series note: As the Mimic films are not direct continuations of thesame storyline--they're simply related thematically and in some subjectmatter--it does not really matter what order you watch them in.It's no secret that Mimic 3 has a number of similarities to AlfredHitchcock's Rear Window (1954). In fact, as writer/director J.T. Pettycomments in his interview on the DVD extras, "Rear Window with giantcockroaches" was the high-concept pitch-line presented to him fresh outof New York University's film school, solely on the basis of hisstudent film, Soft for Digging (2001), which won a Special Jury Prizeat the 2003 Boston Independent Film Festival. What's less frequentlytalked about is that Mimic: Sentinel is a challengingly artistic,well-made film that weaves various themes of voyeurism throughout itslength. Even its subtitle, "Sentinel", has numerous intended meanings,including various senses of "guard" or "protector", and of course,"watcher".Mimic: Sentinel centers its plot on Marvin (Karl Geary) and his unusualfamily--sister Rosy (Alexis Dziena) and mom Simone (Amanda Plummer).Marvin is a survivor of Strickler's disease--the affliction that waswiping out most of New York City's kids at the beginning of the firstMimic (1997). This has caused him to seem slightly like a cross betweensomeone with Down's Syndrome and autism, with a boatload ofasthma-related allergies to boot. In other words, he can barely leavethe house without severe threat to his health. So he spends most of thetime in his room in a large Brooklyn apartment building,voyeuristically studying the neighbors in the building across thestreet while he snaps photographs of them. He has a large wall ofsnapshots with nicknames for everyone, including the mysterious"garbage man". It's not long before Marvin observes some strangeoccurrences, including what he says is the murder of Rosy's friendDesmond (Keith Robinson). This initiates relationships with a coupleother key characters--one a cop, one a beautiful woman from across thestreet, and gradually we enter more typical Mimic (monster-attackhorror) territory.The three Mimic films to date comprise what is without a doubt one ofthe most unique horror film series. Each film has a completelydifferent style and focus, yet all are related in significant ways, andeach is very good to excellent. This third film is probably the mostartistically "difficult" entry. Eventually, during the climax, Pettytakes a slightly more conventional route, as I'm sure he had to per theproducers and studio, but he still manages to retain his unique visionthroughout Mimic: Sentinel's length.Petty takes his time when it comes to pacing, and he doesn't give youthe material you'd probably expect right away, despite the brief,conventional attack scene of the prologue (although note how Pettydwells on the victim's eyeglasses--yet another metaphor for looking atthe world through a voyeuristic veil).For a long time, we see most of the "action" through Marvin's camera,occasionally through Marvin's window without the camera, and eventhrough the photographs on Marvin's wall (this aspect is a nice nod toRemi's photo fetish in Mimic 2, 2001). At one point Petty even presentsimportant scenes as a series of photographic stills, similar to ChrisMarker's La Jetée (1962), which Petty would surely be familiar with asan NYU film student.The shots through Marvin's camera all emphasize an artificial "framing"in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, to underscore the inherent voyeurism of filmsand film watching. This is also done in a more purely stylistic wayduring the climax, where Petty adds a fuzzy-edged circular aperturearound the frame, giving an effect something like watching the filmthrough someone else's eye. There are various other often subtleinstantiations of voyeurism and related themes throughout the film,including characters who are inside various kinds of containers (asewer, a trunk, a refrigerator, an implication of in a wall, clearplastic sheeting, etc.), which are then either perforated so thatothers can see inside while not being completely visible or in the samespace, or which are transparent and afford a somewhat sheltered view.Even when the "horror material proper" finally begins, Petty makes thebrilliant move of showing most of it from a distance. For example, wewatch an attack from Marvin's room, looking out his window to thebuilding across the street. At that point, I wanted the film tocontinue in that highly unusual mode, as it underscored the theme sowell, so it was a bit of a let down at first when Petty had to becomemore conventional. But as I mention above, he still retains hisoriginal touch during the conventional material too.Petty's unusual pacing and approach also gave even greater weight tohis surprisingly brutal gore scenes. I particularly loved the long,lingering tracking shot through an apartment after a bloody attack.That had far more impact than actually seeing the attack would havehad. And once Lance Henriksen's character arrives in full force, thefilm takes a refreshingly bizarre and slightly nihilistic turn.Speaking of Henriksen, he is excellent as always (what genre fandoesn't love Lance Henriksen? He's even great in the bad films he does,like The Untold (aka Sasquatch), 2002). The rest of the cast turns ingreat performances, too, partially because they're so odd. I was a bitdisappointed that the film is so short (the credits start rolling atthe 72 minute mark), but on the other hand, the story is complete as itstands. It's more important that the film is the right length to tellthe story.In Petty's DVD extras interview, he says that working with actors whohave a lot of dialogue made him want to only do romantic comedies inthe future. Don't do it! This is such a fine, unique horror film thatPetty needs to work much more in this genre.

2012-05-15 19:05:33

Rear Window and the Judas Breed

This is the weakest of the Mimic movies. A young man (23ish) is living the life of a bubble boy. Surviving Strickler's disease has left him with respiratory problems. To bide his time he takes pictures of the neighbors in the building across the way. His younger sister helps him with his hobby. But then a young boy disappears.As the guy becomes more and more obsessed with the neighbors he sees a possible murder. He doesn't realize that the Judas Breed is behind it, but he does get the police involved. Things quickly build an it becomes obvious that the big bugs are back.I am not sure of the ending in this one. It is a little vague. If one character was right, then the Judas has already won and humans will be wiped out. It also seemed like there was something missing from the film. Something that would explain what was going on with the birds.Much different from either of the first two and worth seeing once but probably not more.

Matthew Williams 2012-05-14 00:16:09

rear window remake with a twist

This movie hits the mark as a rear window style remake. Newer movie stylesare employed. Many unexpected sharp shocking elements come forth in a halfseen Hitchcock way. You dont know if the main character is telling the truthor is acting as the boy that cried wolf. As events take more of a turn forthe wierd and nasty you know that something is very wrong. Because I had notseen the first two mimic movies when I watched this I honestly thought thatthe story was going to get very Hellraiser in content and was dealing withthe supernatural. This is not how it actually is though! The first twothirds of the movie are slow rear window style and the last half shifts up agear to a very disturbing race for your life. Clever psychological camerawork and bizzare character movements add to the chilling feel that somethingis not right with the world you are watching. I am looking forward to seeingthe first two movies now because of this third movie.

vram22 2012-05-13 10:11:52

Dark, Mysterious ... and not so bad ...

Even though this movie was clearly made on a low-budget and withlimited scenery, it's not altogether bad. It builds on the idea of alightly mentally debilitated young man who takes pictures of neighborsthrough his apartment window. When his sister happens to be pointing acamera out the window, she sees some sort of assault occurring ... andthings only get more suspicious and mysterious as they continue towatch.If you've ever seen Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window", this movie uses asimilar setup to build intrigue and suspense. It kind of works OK inthis case. If the actors/characters were a bit more interesting, thismovie would be much better. But, as it stands, it's a "B" or "C" levelsci-fi movie.

Happy Poopah 2012-05-10 08:32:01

One of the worst sci-fi horror movies i seen

A 15 yr old kid could make a better movie. This movie fails in every catagory. The only thing that kept me even half interested was the whole idea of looking into people's windows but there was really no mystery about it at the end. It was all just a waste of time and the ending didn't even seem like an ending. This was the shortest movie i have ever seen. It's like 1 hr and 10 mins. That's a movie ?

Terry Phillip 2012-05-09 18:09:37

Missed its mark entirely

I really loved the first movie Mimic. The second movie, Mimic 2:Hardshellwas ok too. It had some very suspenseful moments, and it felt true to theoriginal film.This third film, written and directed by a young filmmaker, J.T. Petty,whoas the documentary on the dvd indicated was just given the premise of"RearWindow with Roaches" and was told to run with it. He did, but he ran asfaraway from the original concept as he could. This movie plodded along at asnail's pace with uninteresting characters and no real story sense andbasically had no suspense at all until the last ten minutes. And it waspainful to wade through the movie to get to that part, but I just had toseehow this turkey was going to end. I can understand the filmmaker andstudiowanting to try something new and different, but this whole story premisewastoo off the wall and didn't give the viewer what he expected after havingalready seen the previous two films. This movie was shot in Romania (Ican't understand why-----didn't we have any locations available inAmerica?)and didn't have a very good look to it at all.I can only hope that if there is a fourth movie, it will be made by moreexperienced and competent filmmakers and will give the viewers what theyexpect in a franchise horror film. I believe this movie was astraight-to-video release because the studio had no faith in this movie tostand up at the box office. And they were right.

Prolox 2012-05-02 16:36:28

The word boring is being to kind!

In this third & hopefully last installment in the Mimic series, a youngman supposedly confined to his room because of some type of sickness,(Yet oddly he can walk outside whenever his friends want him to)Discovers one night, while taking pictures from his camera, the evilJudas Breed (monster cockroaches) & tries to warn others of hisdiscovery, but no one will believe him. Soon he realizes that he'llhave to destroy these creatures alone with or without the help of hisfriends, but he should have tried to save us from viewing this horridmovie or stopped it from ever being released! I'm confused here,weren't these films supposed to be horror/science fiction films? thisone is nothing more than straight drama, with half of the film showingthe hero of the film, snapping pictures & spying on people from hisbedroom window. LANCE HENRIKSEN, despite being one of the top billedactors in the movie, is only on screen for about five minutes, heck,even JOHN (FOREVER KNIGHT) KAPELOS as a detective can't save this one!in fact the Judas Breed creatures are nothing more than poster boys,along with the kids from CHILDREN OF THE CORN, the CROW & PINHEAD fromthe HELLRAISER series for Dimension films increasing awful &increasingly cheap direct to video market. Avoid at all costs, unlessyou have trouble sleeping at night then rent it I promise you'll besleeping in no time! 0 (stars)

furtim 2012-05-01 17:49:03

Astoundingly good direct-to-video second sequel...

Two words describe this movie: astoundingly good. I watched thisdirect-to-video sequel expecting a cheesefest that would manage to beenjoyable in spite of itself (much like 'Mimic 2'). Instead, I wasrewardedwith a... well... I'm hesitant to call it "brilliant", but that'sbasicallywhat it was. This sequel took the series in a direction I never would haveexpected and, on top of that, did it very tastefully. The characters wereall very real and likeable, and there were no ridiculous heroics to befound(well, the conclusion is a bit suspect, but I'll allowit).I won't bother trying to summarise the movie, as others have done a goodjobof that, but I did want to add my comments to the plus side on thisone.The rental clerk might look at you funny, but go out and get this gemanyway. You'll thank yourself 80 minutes later. And even if you don't likeit... Hey, it's only 80 minutes!

shanfloyd 2012-05-01 06:15:43

Had good potentials... but wasted them.

Like all straight-to-video sequels of minor franchises, "Mimic:Sentinel" had good original plot but the execution and presentationbecame poor. All the main characters like Marvin or Rosie are quiteunique. And the influence of "Rear Window" was also quite interesting.But the film suffered from what it was bound to suffer -- poorscreenplay, bad acting and the same boring ending.Some interesting approaches are evident though when it comes tocinematography. The use of dark contrast during night shots andredundant use of still pictures surely add some nice flavour to thefilm for the viewer.

2012-04-30 12:59:37

Decent low budget horror from talented director

As a fan of J.T. Petty's The Burrowers, I wanted to check out his other work. His direction more so than his writing really struck me, although The Burrowers is an impressive film and recommended viewing for horror fans. Mimic Sentinel is not quite as successful and heavily influenced by Hitchcock's Rear Window, which provides a nice platform for Petty to show off his talented eye for setting up shots and capturing a dark and creepy mood. The film has a compelling sense of style, which overshadows the merely functional dialogue. Unsurprisingly, Mimic Sentinel was put together quickly and on minimal budget. The haste in which the film was made might be the best excuse for the perfunctory, rather unbelievable climax. As a writer/director, Petty either needs to amp up the writing a bit or find help. As a director, Petty has a great eye and is someone to look out for.

tyler-and-jack 2012-04-29 02:33:27

If you're hyper-sensitive then avoid this, but it's not all that bad.

Following on from two other killer cockroach movies, Mimic: Sentinel isall about Marvin (Karl Geary), a young man who is hyper-sensitive andcannot really leave his room that much due to contracting the diseasethat killed off so many children in the first movie. He watches theworld around him through his camera, gets info from his sister (AlexisDziena) and maintains a photographic record of the apartments opposite.But is the local area home to a growing bug problem or is Marvin justbeing paranoid once again? With a slightly better idea than it's poor predecessor and a muchbetter cast (Geary is good, Dziena is bright and gorgeous and we getthe likes of Amanda Plummer, John Kapelos and Lance Henriksen providingsome decent support), this movie does okay despite it's obviouslimitations.We get less actual cockroach action but there's at least an attempthere to build some tension and sustain it. Okay, that's undone by apoor finale that just leaves you slightly puzzled and dissatisfied butyou can't have everything, I suppose.J.T. Petty does a decent enough job in the director's chair, recappingpast events quickly and concisely while putting a new spin on theconcept, but there could have been even more done here to craft atight, taut, little film.Discerning film viewers should be warned that my rating is a littlegenerous thanks to my being bewitched by the gorgeous Alexis Dziena.Anyone else may want to detract one and rate it just below average.See this if you like: Mimic, Mimic 2, Disturbia.

2012-04-28 09:20:29

"Rear Window" Meets "THEM"

This is the third entry in the Mimic series; this time a shut-in and his hoochie sister have a run-in with the giant cockroaches. The movie starts off slow, maybe too slow in my opinion, but Mimic 3 gets real good at the end. The whole picture has this grungy look, contrasting the main character's immediate surroundings and lifestyle.

Happy Couple 2012-04-25 00:24:07

TERRIBLE!!! DONT WASTE YOUR TIME!!!!

My kids could make a better movie than this!! If you want to watch anything similar, just point your camera out the window, because this is what you'll see in the movie. Bad movie. All this movie was about was about a guy looking through his camera to see giant cockroaches killing people. And the movie looks like you are seeing through a camera. Who wants to see that??? NOT ME!! I'm glad I only spent 1 dollar renting this movie!!

jaywriterXIII 2012-04-24 11:51:55

Cool idea; okay realization = `eh' film

`Rear Window with giant roaches.' That concept alone puts it above Mimic 2. It's different . . . it has potential . . . overall I'd say I liked thebuildup (when convenient dilemmas were not advancing the plot), but damn,did Petty ever blow the payoff. I appreciate the slow paced plot versus fast/hard hitting shock fests,unfortunately, JT didn't really capitalize on it so in effect . . . the filmcan get boring, stale, and it (like the characters) don't have much of apersonality. This would have been great if in the writing we had someQuentin Tarantino or Kevin Smith-esque dialogue. What do these charactersdo? Who are they? What does Marvin think/feel in his freetime (which hehas lots and lots of?) All we ever see him doing is staring through thecamera, which okay, we know what he does but that doesn't mean we know himnor should we care. We learn as much about the people Marvin spies on as wedo Marvin, himself. Folks, that's a problem. Everyone in this film lives and dies for the sole purpose of serving theplot in typical horror fashion. I'm being overly harsh on this film than Iwould for most other horror sequels solely because it wants to be RearWindow. Rear Window may have been about a man with nothing better to do atthe moment than become a voyeur; however, there was far more to him thanlooking through a camera. If you're going to deliberately mimic Hitchcock(no pun), they need to do it on more than just a surface level. Compare Mimic Sentinel to its predecessors and it's not too bad, compareMimic 3 to its Hitchcockian inspiration and it's pretty pathetic (and RearWindow is a far cry from my favorite of Hitch's work.) After seeing Mimic 3's payoff, I'm not so disappointed in Rear Window'sanymore. Rear Window intended the finale to be simple and somewhatunderwhelming, but at the same time Hitchcock maintains his steady buildupeven thought the film is technically paying off. Mimic Sentinel opts forall the bells and whistles, explosions and blood – after all, this is a halfcentury later right? The action comes at the expense of an unwelcomed plot`twist' which was not necessary and comes across as gratuitous (even ifLance Henriksen is involved.) I prefer simple and underwhelming . . . screwthe extras.Once again, despite harsh comments above, in light of typical horror sequelsthis is about as average in execution as you get. I tend to bump it aboveaverage for the sole fact that it at least had a clever idea at theconception stage, which is more than most sequels/remakes have going forthem.

2012-04-24 02:23:37

Something Old, Something New

This review is from: Mimic 3 - Sentinel (DVD) I took a chance on this movie after reading the reviews. I have to say I was surprised by the quality. The directing was good and most of the actors were pretty decent, especially the guy who played Martin; Lance Henriksen, of course, was on point.I won't give you a play-by-play because other reviewers have already done that. I will say, though, that the movie is something like "Rear Window Meets Mimic Bug." It was filmed in Romania, but you can find all this out on the featurette.The movie is heavy on character development so don't go expecting nonstop action from the beginning. In other words, if you're one of those low-attention-span types, then this is definitely not the movie for you. I didn't see any real hardcore gore until 45 or so minutes into it.I agree with the other reviewers in that there were a few scenes that were so dark you couldn't make out what the hell was going on. However, again, if you watch the featurette, you'd know that the director had an extremely limited budget to work with, which I gathered while watching the movie. But I think those dark scenes ultimately added to the films overall charm. It allowed the building of suspense until the excellent kill scenes at the end.As for the video quality, the film looked sharp and I didn't notice any video anomalies. Sound was fine, too.Caution: There is a disturbing scene in the featurette where one of the extras shows us around the Romanian movie lot where wild dogs roam. He shows us, while crying, some dead dogs on some grass as well as a dead puppy. I don't think he was joking. The director mentions how he was stunned by the amount of wild, yet friendly, dogs that roam the streets. I take it they live on handouts and there must not be much of that going on. So, any animal lovers be warned!In some ways, this third installment of Mimic is even more intelligently made than the first. I think it's worth owning and for the price, you can't go wrong.

SILENCEikillyou 2012-04-23 13:25:56

creeper sleeper

I'll have to say, this third sequel was quite good for it's simplicity. Instead of scaring you with the actual Judas Breed man-size insects -createdin the first- it relies on it's plot to creep you out, while taking atotally different approach to the evil of this bizarre 'cure' for achildhood disease. After 'Mimic 2' I felt quite wary about this movie,having never even heard one was being made. It's just that this plotintrigues me so much, I don't seem to care if it's a bad approach or acting(as in part 2; NOT this one -part 3). I felt pretty good about this movieand it SIMPLY was entertaining, as well as scary in it's ownrite.7/10 - thank you

2012-04-20 05:27:09

Worst Out Of The Trilogy

The first movies was dreadful... then it got worse... and then a hell of a lot worse. The movie was hella boring and I wasted my money to see it. There is a reason why bad movies don't come out in theaters.

Chad 2012-04-19 15:42:20

With this third entry in the MIMIC series, director J.T. Petty establishes himsel as one of the directors to look out for!

When you rent a Dimension straight to video project, you never know whatyou're going to get. Sometimes you'll find a rare gem but most of the timeit won't even be worth remembering. Remember all those PROPHECY sequels?That's what I thought. Anyway, I'm happy to say that MIMIC SENTINEL fallsinto the rare gem category. I had absolutely no idea what to expect withthis one nor do I know why I even rented it after hating MIMIC 2 so muchandthe fact that I'm not even that big of a fan of the original. But I'm gladIdid.It goes something like this. Strickland disease (which was established inthe first film) survivor Martin (Karl Geary) suffers from extremeenvironmental sensitivity making it hard for him to leave his room in theapartment he shares with his mother (Amanda Plummer) and his sister, Rosy(Alexis Dziena). So, he obsessively takes photographs of the world outsidehis window and, as you might have guessed, eventually learns that theJudasBugs are back once again. While it's absolutely no mystery that the plotofthis film borrows more than a little from Alfred Hitchkock's REAR WINDOW,the film really works. While I've always found the MIMIC bugs rathercreepy,this film seemed to really capitalize on that and make a genuinely scary,suspense building movie out of them.Rookie filmmaker and screenwriter (he also wrote and directed the as ofyetunreleased indie SOFT FOR DIGGING) J.T. Petty has what it takes to tell agood story and make an entertaining film. Instead of trying to make acrappyfilm that requires more money than he had to work with, Petty made a good,small film that was within his means. By getting rid of a lot of thespecialeffects (even though there are a few) and different locations, Petty letsthe viewer become engrossed in the characters and lets them feel theparanoia that Marvin experiences. Instead of just watching the film, theviewer becomes a voyeur right along with Marvin. Later in the film, evenafter Marvin's voyeuristic journey is over, the director shoots the filmwith a blackened ring around the corners of the TV as if your now watchingMarvin from an apartment across the street as Marvin did to others earlierin the film. For me, this worked to great effect. I felt like I waswatchingsomeone in danger and wasn't getting up to do anything about it. While Ifelt the whole Lance Henrisken aspect of the film was a bit unnecessary,forthe most part the film really worked for me. So as for director J.T.Petty,I'm going to place him in my directors to watch book. I mean, if he canmakea good sequel to a movie about giant bugs then I'm convinced he's capableofanything.B-