as bad as " mimic " was , it definitly scared me . " mimic " continued the frightening hollywood trend of taking a foreign director who shows a lot of creative ingenuity and style , and completely flushing it when he comes to america to make a movie . director guillermo del toro was recently imported from mexico after he made the award winning and inventive horror film " cronos . " that movie worked because it took an unconventional story , unique characters and well written plot and dialogue to create a truly scary movie . in " mimic " , del toro doesn't bother to give us anything original . the plot is a stupid combination of " aliens " meets " species " meets " jurassic park . " the characters have been recycled from a few hundred other movies . there's nothing new in " mimic " . it's just a bunch of old tricks that rarely work . at the end of the movie , you're stuck wanting your money back . maybe the worst thing about the movie is that del toro followed another annoying trend of recent movies : he forgot to turn the lights on . i don't understand why suspense movies lately have to follow the " seven " trend and be set in dark , dank areas . watching " mimic " i was tempted several times to yell at the screen " turn the lights on ! the switch is to your right ! use common sense ! just do it ! you'll be able to see the monster in the corner ! " there's a scene where mira sorvino is standing in subway station while the lights are flickering on and off . it looked like the light operator was having a seizure , and sorvino didn't even notice - she just stood there looking like she was having deep thoughts . " hmmm . . . . i think bean soup would be good for dinner tonight . " " mimic " has a lot of incidental shock tactics ( boo ! just kidding ! ) and follows them up with the real scare , but nothing in this movie scares you . the audience in the theater never jumped during suspenseful moments ; i think they were bored , too . i shouldn't blame del toro . he isn't the first successful foreign director to come to hollywood and make a bad movie . hong kong director john woo made two of the best action films of all time , " the killer " and " hard boiled " then came to america to make the stupid " broken arrow . " french directors luc besson ( " la femme nikita " ) and george sluizer ( " the vanishing " ) followed woo's lead and made dumbed down versions of those movies . robert rodriguez , who directed the terrific low budget " el mariachi " came to hollywood and directed the horrible , high-budget " desperado . " i don't know why a foreign director who shows such talent in his country can't make a good american movie . woo finally broke through and made " face/off " , but it still isn't up to par with his earlier films . i get the feeling a hollywood producer sits in his office , chews on a big smelly cigar and says to the director , " welcome to america ! i bet you must be tired after being on that boat for so long . do you speak english ? now , i know you think you've made good movies in the past , but now you're in america , so things are a little different here . just remember what the american audience always wants , and you'll be fine . they want to see at least one big breasted woman , characters that they've seen a thousand times before ( because change scares americans ) , and you always need a cheesy feel-good ending to wrap things up . if you don't make that kind of movie , you'll be shining my shoes in no time . "
