Monster Movie Monday: Species II (1998)
Review Overview
Featured creature
7Thrills and kills
6Gore and tone
5Matthew Turner | On 03, Jul 2023
Director: Peter Medak
Cast: Natasha Henstridge, Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger, Mykelti Williamson, George Dzundza, James Cromwell, Justin Lazard
Certificate: 18
In the mood for a creature feature? Amazon Prime has a veritable menagerie of monster movies, so we’re working our way through them, one killer beastie at a time. Welcome to Monster Movie Mondays.
Directed by Peter Medak, Species II was released in 1998, hoping to cash in on the unexpected box office success of the original film. To that end, the producers secured the return of three original cast members, even though one of them is technically playing a different character. Although the film ticks a few of the right sequel boxes and doubles down on the trash factor in terms of gore and nudity, it ultimately fails to capture the right tone and doesn’t live up to its predecessor. It’s still fun, though.
Ignoring the alien-infested-rat cliffhanger of the previous film, Species II begins in 1998, where scientist Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger) has refused to learn any lessons from the previous film and has cloned a more docile form of the original alien, now named Eve (Natasha Henstridge). Meanwhile, astronauts Patrick Ross (Justin Lazard), Dennis Gamble (Mykelti Williamson) and Anne Sampas (Myriam Cyr) return from a mission to Mars, where they have unknowingly encountered alien DNA.
Soon afterwards, an infected Patrick leaves a string of corpses in his wake, as women he has sex with die, after giving birth to rapidly growing humanoid children. Aware that Patrick is amassing an alien brood, Laura agrees to allow Eve to help track him down via a psychic link, although that brings its own set of problems. Former alien hunter Preston Lennox (Michael Madsen) and Gamble are on hand to help, but can they stop Patrick before his brood mature into sex-mad alien adults?
In terms of the actual fully grown monsters, there are two this time round – Eve and Patrick – and the monster designs are essentially tweaks to the original alien design by HR Giger, complete with an outrageously sexual appendage for the male version that gets put to frankly jaw-droppingly obscene use in the climax. Once again, there’s a mixture of CGI and practical effects that means the FX work doesn’t look quite as dated as other 90s movies.
The original film had both nudity and gore in abundance, but director Roger Donaldson maintained a tight grip on the tone, ensuring that the movie was essentially fun trash, with both the nude scenes and the gore moments feeling appropriate to the story. That’s really not the case with the sequel, which attempts to out-do the original film with more shocking gore and even more gratuitous nudity, but gets the tone completely wrong, to the point where the gore feels unnecessarily, even excessively nasty, and the nudity is decidedly sleazy.
In fairness, Medak does at least achieve the same clever blend of titilation and horror effects that characterised the first film. That’s particularly evident in the climax (Henstridge’s only nude scene this time round), which does some unexpected things with CGI tentacles.
However, the finale also cops out in one key aspect. The film goes out of its way to establish Patrick’s brood, as he continually hides a group of creepy young children in a shed, as they approach cocooning age. As a result, the audience is primed for a swarm of young monsters in the climax, or at least for something interesting to happen that involves the brood, but instead they’re quickly waved away, as if the film either didn’t know what to do with them or ran up against budgetary constraints.
As for the performances, Henstridge gets more notes to play this time round – most notably in the psychic link scene – but she’s also disappointingly underused, and the film could have used a stronger focus on her character. Madsen and Helgenberger are once again good value, but the film makes the baffling decision to drop their excellent sexual chemistry and subsequent relationship from the first movie.
Lazard makes a decent villain and there’s strong support from stalwart supporting actors – including George Dzundza as Laura’s military boss and James Cromwell as Patrick’s Senator dad. However, the stand-out this time round is Mykelti Williamson, who generates sparky rapport with Madsen and gets all the best lines and reaction moments.
Ultimately, Species II ticks along nicely – it clocks in at a mere 93 minutes – and has some nice ideas, as well as some effective gore and horror sequences. In short, it may not be a perfect sequel, but it’s still a lot better than its reputation would have you believe.