Species IV: The Awakening (2007)

“For their punishment Zeus gave them women.” – Miranda

Number of Times Seen – 1 (3 Mar 2019)

Brief Synopsis – A scientist trying to save his niece who is really an alien, causes more trouble than needed when the predator in here is unleashed.

My Take on it – This is a film that I’ve been avoiding seeing ever since it came out 11 years ago.

The fact that The Vern of That Moment In chose it for next month’s Franchise MOTM at the LAMB made me take the plunge especially since this is thankfully the final of the 4 films in the series that I have now committed myself to watching within the next week or so.

This is by far the worst film in this series and is quite a fitting way to end something that has been overdone.

The connection to the previous films in the series is quite weak and there are too many instances where it feels as if they only used the title for name recognition and not because there should be any kind of real connection.

The story is pretty silly and doesn’t go far which takes a lot away from keeping this interesting.

The characters are all clearly underdeveloped and that gives them all a tag of being cannon fodder instead of trying to give us something that has more meaning or can have some sort of profound impact on things.

This film has lots and lots of carnage as expected and it seems to try too hard to follow a similar plot arc of the previous films instead of trying to give us something unique in any way.

Bottom Line – Worst film of the franchise. The connection to previous films is quite weak and it seems as if they just tried to tag along for the ride by using the title. The story is quite silly and doesn’t manage to really go anywhere which takes so much away from things. None of the characters are developed well enough and therefore we can just assume that they are all there to be cannon fodder instead of trying to do something much more profound. Lots of carnage is what can be expected from this film even if it tries much too hard to keep with the pattern of action of the previous films in the series.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – The producers wanted to go back to H.R. Giger’s designs of the alien creature due to popularity with fans and the absence of this decision in Species III (2004). The original look is apparent but with different color variations and new spikes on the aliens’ wrists of the nemesis. It is also a first in the series that a half human-half alien character does not change fully into the alien creature but has prosthetic eyebrows, veins and contacts for a long period of time in more than one scene. (From IMDB)

Rating – Razzie Worthy (2/10)