Mimic Blu-ray Review

• 24th Oct 2011

Guillermo del Toro has taken a trip back to the past to revisit his first Hollywood feature. And whilst he was put up against the ropes on this one, you can still tell just how much of his artistic vision managed to escape through into the film.

Basically the B-movie premise of the film is that giant mutated cockroaches are starting to take over the city – feeding off the streets, but slowly coming into the line of sight of a group of scientists. It’s a bit of a cheesy set-up, but with del Toro treating the material with respect and, as he says on the disc, like an “A-Picture” there are thrills, spills and plenty of gruesome gunge for viewers to feast their eyes upon. Mira Sorvino and Jeremy Northam are the scientists and are backed up by a memorable supporting cast in this underground thriller including the likes of F. Murray Abraham and Josh Brolin.

Being quite a dark film anyway the Blu-ray quality should help you see a bit further back on the screen. Always a bonus for any Blu-ray upgrade.

del Toro is very frank about his experience on this film, and while this is as close to a director’s cut as he’s likely to get, he still has complaints to make, and often just observations about how the film-making process worked at the time. He isn’t too interested in laying blame squarely on anyone’s shoulders; but he is interested in pointing out the imperfections of how the studio system can work against its own product.

The commentary is a great listen and is worth the upgrade alone, if not for the alternative version of the film you’re buying. Aside from these, there are also some smaller featurettes which look at the design aspect of the film.

Steven Hurst