Main cast: Robin Dunne (Dean), Robert Knepper (Dr Abbot), Sunny Mabrey (Sara), Amelia Cooke (Amelia), JP Pitoc (Hastings), Christopher Neame (Dr Nicholas Turner), and Natasha Henstridge (Eve)
Director: Brad Turner
I honestly don’t know why I would waste my time watching Species III but watch it I do, mostly because I happen to find a video of it at the rental store. I am hoping for a campy no-brainer gore-laden movie with plenty of unintentional comedy, but instead, I get a misguidedly dour and serious movie. Serious is good if there is a good script. Needless to say, this movie doesn’t have one.
After a promisingly hilarious attempt at gore with Natasha Henstridge making a quick appearance as Eve – she must be really needing some rent money – who gave birth to another monster alien girl only to be killed by… um, her baby or some alien fellow nearby, I can’t really be certain. Anyway, the alien baby grows up to be Sara who is slowly learning of her alien nature. She breaks loose from her captors, falls in with a bunch of college students who are apparently genetic geniuses because their DNA models are really big-ass. Alien women run around naked once in a while to elevate the boredom, but on the whole this movie is all talk. There are some predictable babbles about science and the ethics of research that go on and on.
I don’t know what scriptwriter Ben Ripley is thinking because this movie should be full of gore and pointless nudity, no? What’s with this stultifying drama? The script has plenty of logic holes as well. I love the part where the alien can leap over tall buildings but can’t catch up with a train.
In a way, I do feel sorry for the lead actor Robin Dunne. I’ve seen him on some cheap shows on cable TV where he seems to have this knack of starring in very lame sequels of franchises that have long become irrelevant. What is his agent doing?
At any rate, Species III is a perfect movie to watch for those nights when one has trouble sleeping. After the credits roll and I can only stare at the TV screen wondering whether I will ever get my wasted time back, I can only wonder: who would’ve thought a movie with this many scenes of naked young women can be so boring?
