DNA: terror genético

When you take three legendary, blockbuster hits Predator (1987), Alien (1979) and Jurassic Park (1993), and you put them in one big cooking pot and add some water. OK, next you put jungle, local Borneo tribes, fake Anaconda snakes, few helicopters and a few gore scenes. Now, Carefully chose actors... But, too late! Jurgen Prochnow with very neurotic performance and nervous eyes, stiff as a board... A fine actor, didn't expect him here... put some B actress just for cuteness, a little kid for more cuteness, Mark Dacascoss for martial arts action fans to see, but WRONG! no martial arts here! And finally add a creature which was created from the bug DNA (a local myth from Borneo tribes, you can see the cravings in the cave at the beginning of the movie, the craves were craved like in 1997... very ancient!) The creature looks like Alien very much, has those movements, but visually it reminds you more of Syl from "Species" (1996), but as a cheap halloween costume, creature has, to look more cool, a heat vision, or a negative vision, or perhaps a combo of sepia and negative... figure it out! It has a cloaking mechanism and it has very lame roars... Now, you spice this with few fake guns, grenade launcher toy and bad acting. And you get this piece of cr... I mean cake. And guess what... you ain't gonna like it.

This is one of those cracking movies that is so bad it comes out on the other side as an instant classic. Be honest looking at the cast, story line etc what did you expect. I find this movie a guilty pleasure and would recommend it as a good 90 minutes to while away an afternoon.

I thought the first half of this movie was bad - there's a monster that's created by combining an ancient skeleton with the DNA of beetles, or maybe it's a space alien? Both explanations are given. A mad scientist (Jurgen Prochnow) has created this thing as a military weapon (oh yeah, the old completely uncontrollable monster as a weapon gag). A CIA agent and a local doctor / scientist / jungle guide / warrior guy try to stop them. There's just one plot hole after another. At one point the multi-tasking guy and the CIA agent are locked up in a drainage pipe, but escape simply by going to the next exit. They put a guy in a cage to act as bait for the monster, but there are people running around all over the place. Why would they assume the monster would go after the guy in the cage? And on and on.

But the second half of this movie is just a really cheap Predator rip off, scene-by-scene. You get two people laying motionless on a beach, and a monster's-eye view of them - he can't see them because, well, he's 99% blind I guess. The Predator couldn't see Schwarzenegger because he was covered in mud which masked his infra-red signature, but these folks aren't covered in mud. Apparently the creature saw Predator and realized that he shouldn't be able to see them. Then there's the scene where the Indian takes off his shirt and rubs something across his chest, preparing to do battle. And the scene where a big piece of tree trunk is hoisted into the air for a trap. Just for variety, they throw in a scene where a helicopter crashes behind our "good" characters and rolls towards them as they run away, very reminiscent of Aliens. Except the scene in this movie is comically bad. I don't see how anyone could watch it without laughing out loud at that special effect. There's also a drawn out death scene that drags everything to a complete halt just when it had finally started moving.

Anyway, this movie has nothing to recommend it. Prochnow's evil scientist character is really the only one that's developed to any degree, and of course, he's the one we're not supposed to like.

Dacascos turns in one of his better performances in the total Predator rip off. I mean there was scenes that look like they were cut and pasted right from Predator. The special effects were generally good for a 'B' movie, but there was a few scenes where it looked like they just ran out of money (i.e. the holicopter crash). Not bad if you're in the mood for a little no thinking 'b' sci fi...

When I got about one hour into the film I noticed something. THIS IS EXACTLY LIKE PREDATOR! These people basicly lifted scenes right out of predator. i.e. the monster is invisible, the hero makes traps and then waits on a tree, the monster has heat seeking vision and the monster looks a lot like the predator. This film had a good creature costume and some good cgi for the it too. But near the end when the helicopter crashes, the effects are probably the worst you have ever seen. Rent it if you want a good laugh. But rent Predator first.

Rated 14A for some violence and some language (Canadian rating)

14A is like a PG-13 rating in the U.S.A.