13 Nights of Hallowe'en: Night #3 Mimic: Sentinel

Sequels are something in cinema that are often
maligned, especially by critics. The need to compare a sequel to its original is natural but best avoided. A film should stand on its own, or fall on its own to be fair. Tonight’s movie is a sequel. It is the third in the Mimic franchise. For some reason the number is left out of this sequel’s title and it is simply called “Mimic: Sentinel”. While all it takes for a movie to be a sequel is to carry on with some part from the previous movie--a character, a creature, a storyline--sometimes sequel take their own direction, blaze a new trail. This movie falls into that category. At the same time it is not extremely divergent. It is still in the horror vein, and it still has the Mimic bugs, the Judas Breed.

“Mimic: Sentinel” can be described--it is by even the director--as “Rear Window” with Mimic bugs. As funny as this sounds on the surface this is a seriously good movie. J.T. Petty is the writer and director of this film. Comparisons between this movie and “Rear Window” can only be a good thing. It has great suspense, some really nice mystery, and satisfies from start to finish. Some people are going to wish for more material with the Mimic bugs in it, but this one has about as much scene time for the special effects as the original film. It is next to impossible to say if this sequel is better than the first movie in the trilogy, they are very different movies even staying in the same genre and sharing the link that they do. The best that can be said is see this movie and judge for yourself.

Mood: tired.
Music: Spookshow Baby by Rob Zombie off of Hellbilly Deluxe.

Creepy Crawlies

Was there a point in our history that giant insects and spiders besieged us? It might be easy to imagine so given the level of fear these little beasties of the animal kingdom bring to us. Then again, some of the biting and stinging ones would give good enough reason to be leery them. Anyone who has ever been stung by a bunch of hornets over and over would certainly deserve their fear. Such things aside, is there anything beyond weirdness of form that leaves people afraid of the creepy crawlies?

Certainly as far as appearances go, insects and spiders represent something very different than other animals that we see. Their designs are foreign to us; multiple limbs, hard shells, strange or multiple eyes, and the aforementioned stingers and fangs, and let's not forget antennae. For the longest time these creatures had to represent the unknown as much as anything, and we know fear of the unknown is the worst.

Knowledge of the workings of the anatomy and even the thought processes of insects and spiders has not lessened the fear any. One area of knowledge about them has actually made the fear worse. The fact that we know they can be carriers of terrible diseases, and be the cause of other forms of sickness hasn't waylaid anyone's bad impressions of them.

This is added to the fact that in some ways insects have been competitors in the food arena, in that at least they love to eat the things that we do. Anyone who has ever opened a box of cereal from the cupboard and found a hundred or more ants running among the flakes knows this all too well. This all leads back to the original hypothesis, or a parallel of it. There is one type of actual besieging, the locust swarm devouring the crop fields. Seeing that firsthand must be quite the horror, a living cloud, hard bodies blotting out the sun, scouring the land, leaving it barren...

Mood: springy
Music: Be the Ball by Slash's Snakepit and One Tin Soldier by Me First & the Gimme Gimmes.

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