A Experiência 4

Being a fan of the "Species" films, especially loving Species II, I watched this with open arms. I did not think it worked. Partly because the storyline seemed so short-lived. The trailer did look a tad on the positive side though but that, is how trailers are designed. But this is nothing at all like the previous ones, except for the Alien DNA etc etc.

This has awful acting, one hell of a bad bad accent and an OK blond playing the Alien femme fatal, but not worth the 90 or so minutes that it ended up as. If the species films are ever going to work and be believable they need to be serious, with serious (good, well-known) actors. That alone would help the publicity! But no, they go for the opposite.

I even wished afterwards that I had been a director doing this film. Oh my god would I have made some CHANGES! Should have mixed the DNA with sense instead of aliens LOL

big no no no no no, cannot emphasize that enough.

Compared to "Species: The Awakening", the third instalment looks like "Gone With The Wind"!

Why did I bother to watch right to the end? A glutton for punishment, clearly.

Mercifully, this is the fourth and final chapter of the Species saga. And it was a slog, with a barely-coherent plot, barely-watchable acting and a stench of super-low budget about the whole thing.

Gone is the fun and horror of the great first film and the good second one. Gone, too, are Natasha Henstridge, Marg Helgenberger and Michael Madsen. In their place are poor, poor facsimiles.

As another reviewer mentioned, there isn't even much in the way of gratuitous - aka largely unnecessary, but there anyway - sexy and nudity that you expect from made-for-TV spin-offs of big screen movies with plenty of nudity and sex.

The stunning Helena Mattsson is about the only good thing about this movie. Except the end credits.

And so we reach the fourth, and final part of a series that never deserved a first sequel, let alone three of them. The slim storyline was told in its entirely in the first movie, and the next three have just been poorly thought-out remakes, redos or continuations of the same situations. This one follows straight-to-video B-movie territory from beginning to end, bringing everything down to its lowest common denominator. There's a misguided but decent scientist hero – Ben Cross, looking embarrassed to be here, a pretty young and nubile actress, Helena Mattsson, whose acting skills are extremely limited, some monster suits and some very bad CGI effects.

The storyline kind of meanders from place to place without ever progressing. There's some experimental stuff in a laboratory, more scenes of the alien women on the prowl searching for a mate, and other aliens besides who kill people with their long CGI tongues. The script is very poor and the performances poorer, and there's no decent action or gore to speak of. Just nudity, and even that gets boring after a while, so I really do hope this is the last we'll see of the Species films

If you're gonna watch schlock, make sure it's got a hottie or two and a large tub of goo. CGI is remedial but better than the Alien franchises 3rd and 4th installments. Plot obviously rehashed wherein the protagonist isn't aware of the bug under her rug so to speak but acting all around is decent.

The only way for Miranda to go on, is to do what sexy bugs from space do, and that is invade what we got and snatch it like most aliens are want to do.

The film has a new take on chest bursting, that is if you consider Miranda's heaving bosom taught and riddled with curdling blue veins.

Ironically most of the aliens are found in Mexico where they get off on what they call "harvesting." Tentacles and boobs gone wild.

Like her lab daddy says halfway through, "I'm truly sorry." Nuff said.

MGM's Species franchise, like Wishmaster and The Crow, is a perfect example of the law of diminishing returns. Roger Donaldson's 1995 hit Species was a stylish, self-consciously trashy homage to B-movies. One that has had its scenario rehashed three times now.

One would expect a low-budget sequel to revel in sleaze and gore, but since 2004, when the concept was resurrected, 6 years after the cinema release of the disastrous Species 2 (1998), for the direct-to-DVD market, there has been a surprising resistance to the gratuitous ingredients of sex and violence. Species 3 paid little more than lip service to the desires of the target audience and the same is true here.

Deviating from the plot line established by the first three films, which featured Natasha Henstridge, The Awakening is a standalone feature that references and reimagines the ideas of the first film. It posits an alternative scenario; what if the scientist played by Sir Ben Kingsley in the original had not kept the young girl like a rat in cage? What if he'd raised her like his own?

This could have made for an intriguing exploration of nature versus nurture. Had Henstridge's Sil been allowed to develop in a more normal way could her dangerous, alien side have been suppressed? Alas there is little such depth to this cheap cash-in.

Kingsley's role is reinterpreted by fellow British thespian Ben Cross, while Swede Helena Mattsson (who looks a bit like Nicole Kidman) takes over where Henstridge and Sunny Mabrey left off. With only four key cast members and no sign of even Michael Madsen, The Awakening is the weakest of exploitation films. Only the audience is being exploited.

A studio like MGM isn't short of cash, so the explanation for the cheapness of this film is clear; they knew they can get away with it and turn an easy profit. Studios like The Asylum have their desperately limited resources to explain their crass and dissatisfactory efforts, but there's simply no excuse for a Species film to be as unspectacular as this.

Feeling more like a cross between a vampire movie and a retelling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein than a sexy sci-fi movie, Nick Lyon's film merely coasts on tenuous links to its predecessors. There are the HR Giger-inspired creature costumes and the promise of flesh is vaguely satisfied but there's not much effort or imagination. Were it not for a few gratuitous moments and aggressive curse words this could have been made for mainstream TV.

Lyons does well to pay homage to the original film and its subtext but seems to have forgotten how tongue-in-cheek it all was. Species 4 should have taken things to a cartoonish extreme. Instead what could have been knowingly amusing is just po-faced and embarrassing. From Dominic Keating's terrible Aussie accent to the fact that the alien hybrids use their tongues as weapons, at one point they shoot icicle-like spears from their mouths in bullet-time, the experience is one of contradiction.

The original Species really went for it. Utterly shameless titillation. The sequel went further, but in a misjudged, sleazy and misogynistic direction. Perhaps this is why the following two instalments have been so tame. The Awakening, as evidenced by its 15 rating, delivers the bare minimum that one could expect from a film with the Species title. Cautiously exploitative.

Like its heroine, The Awakening is in denial, trying its best not to give in to its primitive instincts. There's the potential for a wild ride in its concept and its plot, but Lyons takes it so seriously that the only laughs come unintentionally. This is a film in which a back alley scientist creates sex-crazed human/alien hybrids that run around Mexico! One of them dresses as demonic nun and leaps between rooftops, lassoing potential prey with its tongue; this is potentially hilarious stuff! But it's stripped bare, like its heroine in the final act, devoid of emotion. This is a film of wasted opportunities.