The Look of Love Is In Her Eyes

It has been a lot longer than I expected since I reviewed 1995’s Species. I originally expected to quickly burn through the series while watching other stuff on the side, but one thing after another came up, and this franchise faded from memory. I honestly think it faded from most people’s memories because you don’t exactly hear people saying, “oh yeah, I remember Species. That film with Natasha Henstridge as the horny alien. Hell yeah, one of my favorites.” That is not the legacy of Species.

Which is funny because back in 1995 this was a legitimate blockbuster. The sci-fi alien erotic thriller became a big smash that year, earning $113.3 Mil at the Box Office, and with continued rentals, home video sales, and broadcast licensing rights, it became something of an outer space monster, some pun intended. Despite somewhat cheap looking effects, and underwhelming performances from much of the cast, audiences in the mid-1990s apparently really wanted to see an alien queen who liked to get down and breed, and they turned it into the surprise hit of the summer, holding its own against the likes of Die Hard With a Vengeance, Apollo 13, and Batman Forever. A sequel was a foregone conclusion.

Interestingly, then, no one cared about the sequel. Where the first film far outperformed its $30 Mil budget, becoming a hit no one could have expected, its sequel barely made over half its $35 Mil budget, flopping just as hard as everyone (likely) expected. Why? Likely because all the charm of the first Species film had worn off by the time Species II hit theaters in April 1998. Where the first film was a fun bit of subversive counter-programming to all the mainstream hits in theaters, everyone realized that the film was crap soon after. It was fun crap, but crap all the same. Going back to the well once all the buzz died down seemed like a really terrible idea.

And yet, I have to admit that Species II does have its charms. It manages to find a way to tell a new story in the Species universe that isn’t just a retread of the same erotic thrills and body horror spills of the first movie. It’s gross, and weird, and has a lot of nudity, and if that’s what you, as a Species fan, liked about the first film, the producers certainly wanted you to know that they’d provide way more of it this time around. It’s not a good film, and in some ways I’d say it’s even weaker than the original, but for a film that just wanted to do its own thing and be weird and sexy and alien, Species II isn’t too bad at its task.

Picking up some time after the events of the first film, we open with a manned mission to Mars arriving at the red planet. Mission commander Patrick Ross (Justin Lazard) takes the landing vehicle down while his crew, Dennis Gamble (Mykelti Williamson) and Anne Sampas (Myriam Cyr), stay above and monitor progress. Ross grabs three core samples from the planet and heads back up, to the cheers of an onlooking Earth, and then the crew gets ready to fly back. But one of the core samples breaks open, and a tendril of greenish goo slides its way to the crew, getting at them as they prepare for launch. They pass out, waking up minutes later, and seemingly nothing is wrong… for now.

Back at the planet, weeks later, our three astronauts are hailed as heroes. While Dennis Gamble seems perfectly fine, there’s clearly something wrong with Patrick, which the mission commander says to his own father, U.S. Senator Judson Ross (James Cromwell). His dad, though, just brushes it off. Soon, Patrick (or, really, the alien that has taken over his body) is out at all hours, finding women and impregnating them with his fast-growing offspring. This quickly kills the women, but it does leave alien-Patrick with a whole suite of new children that can quickly grow and help him spread across the planet. It’s up to the team of alien researchers – Michael Madsen as Preston "Press" Lennox and Marg Helgenberger as Dr. Laura Baker, both returning from the first film – along with the clone of the original alien, known as Eve (played by Henstridge) to find Patrick and stop him, and his children, for good.

What I like about Species II is that it doesn’t try and do the exact same thing as before. Having Patrick as the host to the alien, but not a willing one, puts a bit of character drama into his situation. Can he be saved? Is he just an alien now? There are moments where the film flirts with this idea and it creates legitimately interesting scenes for the character. They’re fleeting, because it’s not a very good film, but these are moments I liked and that I wished the film did more to explore. It could have created a very thought-provoking idea about what is reality for this character… but the film isn’t interested in that.

The film also uses Patrick to do a reverse storyline from the first movie. Instead of having the female alien go around, trying to get knocked up by the perfect donor so she can have one exceptional baby, Patrick is going around knocking up every woman that suits his needs. This leads to some pretty gory birth scenes, and it quickly raises the stakes because every woman he sleeps with immediately leads to another child for his collective. This film moves faster, and makes it clear that humanity is very quickly doomed if Patrick isn’t stopped. That’s a solid idea for the film.

There are problems with Species II, and they largely occur in the last act of the film. All that energy, and the very tense moments of alien hunting we get, quickly fall aside once the hunters catch Patrick’s trail. What was an interesting game of cat and mouse quickly becomes a boring attack on a single location, and the film doesn’t really know what to do at that point. It loses all momentum, all character, unbecoming drab and boring instead. When we’re talking about sexy, gross aliens, boring should be the last thing the film manages.

You’ll also notice that we’ve gone this whole time and not even explored what Natasha Henstridge’s character, Eve, is doing in the film. That’s because she’s as tacked on as possible here. Henstridge signed a three picture deal for this series, and this film had to put her in. She’s the alien audiences were here to see, so of course she’s included. The problem is that the writers didn’t actually have anything for her to do. She stands around, acts horny sometimes, plays up a psychic connection to help the characters track Patrick (which they could have done on their own without her “help”), and then she breaks out near the end to go mate with Patrick, and the film totally forgets how to use her effectively at all. She has no story, no agency, and then the film fails to utilize her at all. She could be written out of the film entirely and it wouldn’t matter. When your biggest draw is inessential to the film that speaks volumes.

End of the day, Species II is about half of a good (or at least a watchable, trashy) film. The other half is rote and boring and completely disposable. I could frankly say about the same for the first film, which was also trashy but watchable, falling apart in the last act. These two are a solid pair, in that they both succeed and fail in the same ways. The trash alien sex is funny, the rest of the movie is awful, and it’s no wonder Species II died. If you saw the first film you knew what to expect, and that meant audiences knew well to steer clear of this sequel.