Species – The Awakening

Species: The Awakening is a 2007 science fiction horror film and a stand-alone film in the Species film series. The film was directed by Nick Lyon and starring Helena Mattsson, Adam Wylie, Ben Cross, Marco Bacuzzi, Marlene Favela and Dominic Keating as "Forbes". It is the first film of the Species series that does not feature Natasha Henstridge. The film premiered on the American broadcast, the Sci-Fi Channel on September 29, 2007 and was released on DVD on October 2, 2007.

Plot

Miranda Hollander (Helena Mattsson) is a beautiful and smart young woman. She is a college professor and lives with her "uncle", Tom Hollander (Ben Cross) who works in a museum. Miranda can read books just by touching them, without even needing to open them. Miranda believes that she has lived with her "uncle" ever since her parents were killed in an accident while she was a baby. After her birthday, Miranda becomes unconscious and is sent to a local hospital. Tom is notified by the police. When Miranda arrives at the hospital, she silently transforms into alien form, strips naked and by seducing kills a few people. When Tom finally arrives at the hospital the following morning, he finds bodies everywhere. Tom locates Miranda, injects her with human hormone and begins to drive her to Mexico.

On the way to Mexico, Miranda wakes up, asking for the cause of her 'illness'. Tom tells Miranda that she is the result of an experiment that combined human and alien DNA, an experiment conducted with his friend Forbes McGuire (Dominic Keating) while they were both still in college. Tom has been injecting her with human hormones since her childhood to suppress her alien DNA. Her parents never existed; they were just a fiction created by Tom to help build up Miranda's "normal life." Tom explains he and Forbes parted ways because of differences of opinion over their vision of their creation.

When they arrive in Mexico, Miranda rests in a motel room while Tom spends the day searching for Forbes. After a few incidents, Tom and Miranda locate Forbes' current home. Forbes now lives with his recent experiment named Azura (Marlene Favela), another human and alien DNA hybrid who also serves as his lover. Forbes supports his experiment by creating half-alien facsimiles of dead pets and relatives. Forbes checks Miranda's condition and finds that Miranda has reached the end of her lifespan and will die in days. The only way to deny death is injecting fresh human DNA into Miranda. Miranda won't allow that to happen when she realizes it will result in the sacrifice of another human being.

Again, Miranda becomes unconscious. Tom goes searching for a "donor" and is mugged by a woman in the process. Azura then incapacitates the mugger and the two bring her back to Forbes' lab, where they succeed in extending Miranda's life. However, Miranda jokes about having sex with Azura; she even invites Tom to have drunken sex in their hotel room. When she is refused, Miranda leaves. Tom studies Miranda's blood and sees the hormones are unstable, resulting in her alien side becoming increasingly dominant, mentally first, then physically. She copulates with the innkeeper, another hybrid, but his sterility results in her killing him. Miranda then steals a provocative red dress from a bar singer.

Tom wishes to sedate Miranda, so they can fix the imbalance in her DNA; Forbes gives him a near-lethal dose to use, but warns that she's "100% pure creature." Investigating a church, Tom is attacked by Azura; she is angry that his arrival changed things. He manages to knock her out by dropping a large cross on her, leaving Azura to heal and regain consciousness. Forbes tracks Miranda to an abandoned warehouse, where she strips naked; Miranda reveals Forbes has wanted to have sex with her since they met. She squeezes his hand to make him drop the sedative; Forbes gives in to his lust, allowing Miranda to strip him. They copulate, much to his pleasure. Once finished, Miranda changes into alien form and sends her tongue down Forbes' throat, suffocating him. Tom finds them later, barely pitying Forbes.

Tom takes Miranda back to Forbes' house, where he discovers via X-ray that a new creature is rapidly growing in her womb. Miranda weakly says her humanity is dying, and that she doesn't want to be pure alien. Unfortunately, Azura returns in alien form; Tom is forced to fight her off. Just when Azura has Tom cornered, Miranda attacks her and kills Azura. However, she suffers a fatal wound. In human form, Miranda thanks Tom for giving her life before dying.

In the final scene Tom turns on all the gas burners and tanks in the house and leaves. The house explodes and Tom walks away, as the film ends.

Cast

• Helena Mattsson as Miranda Hollander
• Ben Cross as Tom Hollander
• Dominic Keating as Forbes Maguire
• Marlene Favela as Azura
• Meagen Fay as Celeste
• Roger Cudney as Leland Fisk
• Mauricio Martinez as Dalton
• Felipe de Lara as Burke
• Julian Sedgwick as Logan Wilson
• Marco Bacuzzi as Rinaldo
• Adam Wylie as Jared

Production

On September 6, 2006, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced another sequel to Species was in production. An MGM/360 Production, filming commenced in October 2006, with Frank Mancuso Jr. returning as producer.

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 the last installment. 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.

Title

The film's title underwent several changes, starting as Species IV, Species: Quattro and finally Species: The Awakening. During pre-production the film was referred to as Species IV on movie websites. When an online trailer was released the film was called Species: Quattro.^[1] Eventually Nick Lyon, the director of the film, gave the film's current name on his official website. Like the third film, the original film's logo is used for the main title.

References

External links

• Species – The Awakening at the Internet Movie Database
• Species – The Awakening at AllMovie