Mimic

The title sequence is superb, the haunting choral soundtrack bringing to mind the wonder of God's creations as the camera pans over the fragile bodies of butterfly specimens. The credits jitter bug-like around the screen, and the tones of decay pervading the photography enhance the Memento Mori mood. It is reminiscent of the opening sequence of Werner Herzog's ""Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht"" which provided the same spectacle with mummified corpses - but this is more delicate in touch, and suggests that Guillermo del Toro has given us a film of the standard of his debut, the poetic vampire film 'Cronos'.

After a cockroach-spread disease wipes out a generation of children in the city, scientists breed genetically modified killer cockroaches to destroy the disease-ridden ones. It all seems to have worked splendidly until 3 years later when a scientist discovers that down in the evolutionary soup of the city's subway those bugs have been doing a bit of mutating...

The main characters - the scientist and her husband - are refreshingly down-to-earth, reacting to events with convincing reluctance and trepidation, and the decision to make many of the supporting cast children is pleasing, and intriguing in its irony (their lives now threatened by the insect that saved their lives from disease).

It is beautifully filmed, the palette restricted to the colours of grime - black, browns, and dirty wet greys - and shadows linger where you'd expect there to be light. From underground there is a superb shot of a drain cover high above, the people walking over it on the street looking as small as insects, while we hear the sound of insects as big as people scuttling around us - and the film is full of these touches.

Unfortunately, all this style and imagination has been pushed into the straitjacket of a formulaic sci-fi horror plot, which begins like an episode of the X-Files and gradually mutates into a re-run of the 'Alien' series - and the convenient sequence of events that bring the film to a tidy end are a let down. You feel you're watching a potentially great film being dragged against its will down an overly trodden path to an all too familiar destination.

But despite this reservation, as a genre flick 'Mimic' is an attractive specimen, and one well worth catching.