Mimic 3 Sentinel (2003)

Mimic 3 Sentinel (2003), directed by J.T. Petty, 1 star

"Haven’t you guys seen this movie?" – Marvin Montrose

If the demonstrative pronoun in the above quote referred to “Mimic 3 Sentinel,” then my guess is that few people would answer yes to the question posed.  And that’s a mercy.  In the film, however, Marvin Montrose (Karl Geary), a sickly bubble boy confined largely to his room, is referencing Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” even though he does not name the film.  The question is posed to his hopelessly drug-addicted younger sister Rosy (Alexis Dziena) and her friend Carmen (Rebecca Mader), a pretty young lady from across the alley.  Since his question is never answered, one can infer that neither of these characters know what he’s talking about, but my having seen both films, I wonder what director/screenwriter J.T. Petty is talking about.  Yes, both films do feature a man with a camera who is confined for medical reasons to his room, but “Rear Window” is a masterful piece of filmmaking and “Mimic 3 Sentinel” is a miserable piece of something entirely different.

In his pre-digital world, Marvin unabashedly takes picture after picture from his bedroom window, most of which are terrible.  It must have cost his family a fortune to develop all the photographs that he's plastered on the walls of his room.  He shoots with the lights on so everyone in the neighboring apartments can see what he’s doing, but nobody seems to notice or care.  His timing is also invariably way off.  When there is nothing going on, his eye is glued to the viewfinder.  When creatures come in for the kill, he’s nowhere to be found.

I’d really like to say something nice about the film, but I just can't think of anything.  The cast does include Amanda Plummer (“Pulp Fiction”) as Marvin’s mom and Lance Henriksen (“Aliens”) as “the garbage man” (don’t ask), but neither actor is given any motivation or material to work with.  When they die (oh, sorry; I guess that was a spoiler), it’s good riddance to bad rubbish.

There’s nothing going on in the way of filmmaking either.  The plot is plodding; the score is uninspired (what’s with the unseen, diegetic viola?); and all of the characters—not just Marvin—seem completely enervated and sleep-deprived.  Perhaps, the actors who portrayed them really were.  The film was shot in Romania (most of the crew have diacritical marks in their names and there’s also a nod to Bucharest in the end titles), and except, perhaps, for the effects shots, it couldn’t have taken very long to shoot the whole thing.  Maybe the crew rushed through it as quickly as possible to put it all behind them.  Sheer speculation on my part, I admit.

So why did I watch it through to the end?  For the same reasons I always do.  I obsess over completion: After watching “Mimic,” I stumbled upon the two sequels, and that as they say is that.  In my estimation, this is the worst of the bunch by far.  If you like films about angry overgrown bugs, there are many others to choose from, any one of which has got to have more going for it than this.