Species 3 (2004)

SPECIES 3

WRITER: Ben Ripley

DIRECTOR: Brad Turner

STARRING: Robin Dunne as Dean
    Robert Knepper as Dr. Abbot
    Amelia Cooke as Amelia
    J.P. Pitoc as Hastings
    Michael Warren as Agent Wasach
    Christopher Neame as Dr. Nicholas Turner
    Patricia Bethune as Colleen
    Joel Stoffer as Portus
    James Leo Ryan as Yosef
    Savanna Fields as Young Sara
    Natasha Henstridge as Eve
    Sunny Mabrey as Sara

QUICK CUT: The hybrid aliens are back for more killing and screwing, but this time Eve is out of the picture, and we focus on a new generation of alien sex machines.  Which is the name of my Nickleback cover band.

THE MORGUE

    Abbot - The man who takes baby Sara from her mother, and becomes her surrogate father.  He's this movie's Fitch, basically.  And he thinks it is perfectly okay to knowingly try and create a perfect human-killing machine.

    Dean - A student of Abbot's, and looking for funding, so he gets easilly blackmailed into helping his teacher raise an alien girl that he totally falls for.  Ahh, just like my college days.

    Sara - Our Eve replacement, to keep things young and fresh.  Her only motivations are sex and procreation.  And don't get in her way.

Once, twice, three times a lady.

THE GUTS: Species again?  Do I haveta?  Sigh, fine.  As the credits open, it tries to be way more artsy than these movies should ever try to be, and roll over some black and white footage as a woman talks about the aliens coming here because of our advent of atomic energy.  Nah, it was because of tv.  Everything is around tv.

But after that, things get normal as Private T-Bag and friend are driving around looking for something, and he starts to narrate.  And this is set on Friday, April 13th.  Ok movie, now you're just pandering to me.

As Abbot narrates and ponders deep thoughts, the movie flashes back over reused footage from the previous movies.  This is how direct to video movies pad their time, and save money.  I hope this isn't the extent of Natasha's 'special appearance' credit, because that would be lame.

Abbot ponders if Eve's victims were ever aware in the moments before their death what she might have been, and I'd say as the spiny bone tongue pushed through the back of their skulls?  There's a good chance!

Unlike them, he's fully aware of what she is, what she's done, and admits he's been tasked to try a third time to try and make something better, and 'more pure'.  What could possibly go wrong?  Considering how well that went twice before?  EVERYTHING.

This is something that is never made clear in the movie.  Tasked by who?  It can't be the army, since they seem pretty against this, and why would he later run away with the alien?  So a higher calling, then?  And how does he go from driving a transport for the army one day, and teaching at a university the next?  This is the biggest leap the movie asks, I think.

Abbot's navigator realises they're on the wrong road, and tells him to pull over and turn around.  And that's when things get hinky and Abbot pulls his gun.

I ain't going back to Fox River!

And in a surprising twist, because GASP continuity! they hear something in the back of their truck, and one of the Eve-Babies pokes his head up to the window.  Ok, I am impressed.  We are literally picking up where the movie left off.

But that's not all that comes through the window, as the other officer gets an alien spike smashing through the window and into his head.  This catches even Abbot off guard, and it marks our first kill in nicely bloody fashion.

Abbot checks out the back of the truck and there's a mostly dead Eve with her very much alive baby sitting there and staring, still wearing his grey potato sack clothing.

And that's when Eve's eyes flitter open and she sits up, which is a good thing, since that would've been such a waste to give her a credit for laying on a gurney.

Being alive isn't enough for her, as her stomach starts to do a John Hurt impression, but rather than just bursting outright, it grows out longer and longer, looking not unlike the object that would have caused her to be pregnant, and forming a gelatinous sac.  And yes, ew.

Which just makes the other kid slash his tongue out and start choking Eve.  Worst case of sibling rivalry EVER.

Abbot just stands there and watches at the alien birth slash murder, and I can't say as I blame him.  I'm half-stunned to the point of not wanting to write, and that's supposed to be real for him.

The boy snaps mommy's neck, ending Henstridge's part in all this, just as the baby is born.  As if this wasn't bad enough, a military chopper tracking the truck finally finds them and comes to see what's up since it stopped moving.

Abbot somehow manages to run off carrying the newborn, without the boy seeing, and the kid jumps out of the truck as well, trying to escape before the army shows up to finish what they started a whole movie ago.

Geeze, that kid looks like he could bench press Schwarzenegger!

Meanwhile, in another movie, a student called Dean is giving us a tour of an old power plant, and shows us how he will revolutionise the system and make more better power!  He opens up a giant door and shows us his prototype MacGuffin, erm ARC...er, fusion reactor!  At least that all ties back to the opening voiceover.  But that's all that ties back to that, since the alien atom connection never really comes into play.

Dean rambles on about his technobabble, until he gets asked if having this thing sitting there is dangerous or not.  Don't worry, if it goes critical, they'll just make a Scifi Channel movie about it.  A two for one deal!  Species 3 and Nuclear Doomsday vs. Sharktopus!

He rushes off to his classes after show and tell, and runs right into...the guy who took the Eve baby!  Did I miss a 'X years later' text crawl at some point?  Probably not, since those aliens can spawn rapidly, but I sure feel like I missed something.

Abbot rambles on about how we have no right to decide which species live or die, citing the last remaining smallpox organisms scheduled for destruction being held at the CDC, and yeah.  Dean has the same "WTF?" expression you might be having.

And in a few years, I plan to intern at the Sanctuary...

As he's wandering through the quad, Dean runs into his advisor, who goes off on his own rant while Abbot listens.  Seems that they've decided to can the fusion reactor project because it's nothing more than a pipe dream.  But...but they built it!  It's sitting at the power plant, just needing to be turned on!  That's...that's dumb!  In so many ways!  Which is saying something for a movie I'm reviewing.

Abbot heads home after his eavesdropping, and finds his dead cat, just named Cat!, that the alien spawnling decided to snap in half off camera.

He steps over the fuzzy corpse and looks around his basement lab.  The first thing he sees is a cage in the corner that's wide open, but I guess was supposed to be locked.  The second thing he sees is a now more grown, but still young spawnling, telling him she's hungry.  Pfff, eat the cat.

She demands lobster, thanks to the commercials on tv.  SEE!  I told you, television!  Although, I am fearful of a kid this much raised on television.  It's the ultimate parenting fear made manifest.  Raised on tv, wanting to have sex at a young age...

Alas poor Catstello. We knew him well.

So Abbot gets his little alien her lobster, and the movie veers into more comedic territory than the previous films, when she picks the thing up, shell and all, and bites right into the crunchy goodness.  He tries to teach her to use silverware properly, and this is when she learns about knives.  And how come she didn't pick THAT up from tv?

But she'd rather just use her hands, and shoves the silverware away.  Ahh, rebellious youth seems to be a universal constant.  I'd hate to see him scold the girl, what with the things she can do.  And as an aside, that crunching noise every time she bites into the shell sets my teeth on edge.

While I eagerly await the killing to recommence, Abbot brings the girl some pie in a SaraLee box, and that's how she gets her name.  Well, it's better than how "Splice" named Dren.

Abbot puts Sara to bed, and makes her promise not to leave the house, and he'll leave her cage unlocked.  So, just trading up to a bigger cage, then.  He then puts his girl to sleep with a thrilling bedtime story of how she's a third generation alien.  Hilariously, he says he's keeping her alive because he believes she contains a message, the reason she's here.

Um, to kill and breed us out of existence.  Someone buy him the DVDs?

I'm not dead yet!

Back with the dead Eve, they discover she was pregnant, which is understandably bad and terrifying.  So the logical course of action is to cover it up and burn the body!

Abbot gets his comeuppance for eavesdropping on Dean losing his funding, when Turner calls him up and tells him that Abbot's funding is going down the tubes as well.  Are aliens trying to use it to fund the football team again?  I already watched that movie!

He gets interrupted by a weird bald guy at the door to his office, and lets him right in.  And it turns out the weird guy is the bulky kid that killed Eve, all growed up after a few short days.  The guy is gasping and wheezing, demanding to know where his sister is.

Doc, is this normal?

Abbot draws some blood from the half-breed before it dies in his chair.  He reveals there are others out there, the other spawn from Species 2, and they're also having troubles staying alive.  Well, it's good to know the alien invasion would trip over its own shoelaces before it got too far.

The blood gets instantly analysed, which is always handy.  It turns out that there is nothing wrong with him and there's only dust and pollen floating around in his bloodstream.  Damn, these aliens are easier to beat than H.G. Wells' aliens!  Throw a flower at them and BAM! dead!

It is rare when a movie catches me off guard, but this one did.  As the half-breed pulls off his glasses, his ear sloughs off with a gushy sound.  I was not expecting that, and gyahed when it fell.

Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what an alien he is.

And then he dies.  And tentacles explode out of his stomach.  Huh.  Did not see that coming, either.

The next day, Abbot calls over Dean for a pow wow of the underfunded.  Dean thinks that's all the meeting is about, and as he's leaving, the professor tells him about his little science project.

Dean checks out the dead half-breed, and pokes at the stomach tentacles with a handy poker next to the fireplace.  In the professor's office.  At school.  Wait, what?

I am so done with seafood after this movie.

Things get a bit crazy as Abbot explains his plan to pick apart the dead thing, all so he can create a perfect, resistant, alien species and...WAIT WHAT?!  And rather than ask that same question, Dean just wants to know how.  Oh yes, this will end well.

And more back at the ranch, Eve is gestating on the ceiling like her grandmommy did a few movies ago on a train.

We even get treated to watching this movie's Natasha Henstridge fall out of the old skin and onto the floor, and get drowned in placental juices.  This rebirth is almost more disgusting than her first one.  Eww redux.

Professor Turner shows up to snoop around, and finds Abbot's private basement lab.  Oh, and the all grown up and very naked Sara.  I bet he wasn't expecting to find that in his little breaking and entering.

He's understandably flustered, and tries to excuse himself, but Sara asks him to sit down to tea.  Or something.  I'm not entirely keeping abreast of the situation...Sorry!

And ugh, this new Sara can't act her way out of a placental sac.  I hope she's just playing it deadpan because I hate mocking starting actors, but this hurts to listen to.

Turner tries to guess just what this woman is to Abbot, and gets a positive response to 'just friend'.  Yes, Abbot's friend who likes to strut around the house completely starkers.  Where do I get friends like this?

Sara tears through Turner's shirt, and he thinks he is about to become the world's most luckiest peeping tom ever, fulfilling the hopes and dreams of every voyeur ever, but she stops and tells him to leave.  Ahhh, the disease sense kicking in.

But he's not about to leave and pursues the newborn woman, telling her that moments like these don't happen every day.  Yeah, they don't happen, EVER.  At least, outside of Penthouse letter columns.

She's one of the Fremen! The spice must flow!

He tries to force himself upon her, but she pushes him away and growls, which stops Turner's ranting cold.  She goes all poor man's Giger on the schmuck, and stabs into his brain with twin tendrils.  This is why no means no, people.

The scientists return home, and find the old Sara shell still dangling from the ceiling, and Abbot knows exactly what that means.  Dean on the other hand is utterly lost as the plot races on by him.  Meanwhile, Sara has nakedly wandered outside to steal some clothes.

Dean finds Turner's body, and is quite ready to call the police, but Abbot sees this as more of an opportunity.  What with all that cutting of funding and such, and also nabs his access card for future plot convenience.

Abbot tries to convince Dean that they can do great things with Sara, and what she did wasn't murder, just instinct.  I think that might still count as murder.  Self defense at best.  Anyways, Dean eventually agrees after some minor convincing, as long as he gets shared credit on destroying the human race.  Can do!

While this conversation is going on, and the subsequent disposal of Turner's car AND body, the movie seems to have completely forgotten about Sara wandering around.  Heck, the two guys have forgotten about her too.  You would think finding the alien sex and death machine would be a top priority and THEN you hide the bodies.

They do finally think of her while they're tossing the body in the swamp, and Abbot says he'll know Sara when he sees her, even though she could be anywhere.  She could have been less anywhere if you'd looked right away!  She was just next door when you got home!

I dunno, a girl that plain might have trouble getting laid.

Fortunately, since she's in a college town on the weekend, she doesn't have far to go to find horny guys.  I will say this about Sunny Mabrey.  Her acting may be wooden, but she does have that clinical, observant stare that Henstridge established so well in the previous films, down pat.

Anyways, Sara goes to a frat party, tosses unsuitable guys around like they're on wires, and one guy is kinda into the whole rough and tumble thing, so comes on to her.  They kiss, and he wants something with a little more tongue.  I'm about to warn him off, but she does it for me.  Nice little reference to the other movies.

Sara somehow manages to NOT find a guy at the college, and wanders around town until a nice woman offers her a ride home.  A nice woman who believes in aliens and Roswell.  Oh, if only she knew what was in her car.

All of a sudden, Sara freaks out and tells Colleen to turn and stop at a railroad crossing.  This seems pretty baffling, and it only becomes moreso as a train speeds by, and Sara jumps out to give chase.

Faster than a speeding locomotive.

She then trips and falls, losing an arm under the train.  Colleen runs over to see if she needs a hand, and is terrified when Sara stands up and her arm regrows before Colleen's eyes.  Well, if she wasn't a believer before...

The next day, Dean rushes back to Abbot's house, where the teacher is busy slicing up the half-breed's body.  Um, didn't they already say they were cutting the thing up and disposing of it in garbage bags?  Looks like all they did was remove the legs.  Did they not want him running away?

Dean stumbles into the house, and is grabbed by Abbot's guard dog...er, Sara, who pins him to the wall, crushing his throat.  He quickly explains who he is, which is a good thing for his windpipe.

Operation never prepared me for this.

Abbot pauses in his dissection to show Dean some of Fitch's old files, and I yay at more references to the past.  Continuity is good.  He shows several pictures of the previous aliens, and explains how human and alien they were, and their weaknesses and everything else.  And damnit, they paid to use Natasha's image in this movie, they are damned well gonna use it!

They get up to Sara's DNA, and discuss how she's perfect coming from two parents with alien DNA in them, and so even more alien, and thus not genetically compatible with humans, or something, so there's no need to worry about her getting laid, so it's ok for her to go wandering.  She could still go on a killing spree, but what's a little blood between species?

Sara heads out into town to explore, and she has a vision of a weird guy that saw her on the train.  She tracks him down to a motel where whoa hey, his eyes are glowing red!  I guess that would be why she demanded Colleen stop for the train.

Next time try Visine.

It takes about three seconds for the pair of crunchy aliens to get their clothes off and get it on.  I'm surprised they waited for the privacy of his motel room, but I guess the future extinction of our species still knows some modicum of decency.

But even with this thing, Sara can sense the faults of the half-breeds, sense that he's dying, and even they aren't good enough for her.  Man, I hate girls that are so picky about their boyfriends.  He never does the dishes, he doesn't take me anywhere nice, he's half alien and dying.  Nothing is good enough!

So she leaves another man behind to spit out his teeth, and heads home.  Dean is there waiting, since he's a college nerd and has nothing better to do on a weekend.  My point is proven when he decides to teach her chess.  Somehow, teaching the killer aliens about strategy and planning feels like a bad idea.  Maybe start with Candy Land first?

And she totally schools HIM in the game, and has him in checkmate after only a handful of moves.  Oh yeah, this is going to go swimmingly for the human race.

After Dean randomly burns his hand for no reason, he heads back to his dorm room where his roomie, Hastings, has found a website for a hot teacher looking for a lab assistant, that looks about as sketchily porntastic as it might sound.

Dean has his friend shut the computer down when the woman asks for some highly technical gobbledy gook, and doing so has somehow alerted the government because it contains several specific references to things from Project: Athena that created Sil and Eve.

After Abbot tells Dean not to have feelings for Sara, since she'll only break his heart (and rip out his spine), they call her down to take some blood and do some tests, at which point she quickly disrobes right in front of Dean.  Oh yeah, that's not going to help him avoid the girl.

Just as Dean takes her blood though, another alien shows up and grabs her, causing a fight to break out in the tiny underground lair.  Things get broken, bats get bitten in half, humans are thrown around some more.  Fun, smashy stuff.

The humans get out of the lab and close it up, flooding the sealed off room with the gas that has proven so very non-effective in the past.  Dean's concerned about killing Sara too, for the sake of the experiment, I'm sure.  But we learn that Abbot has already harvested her eggs, and did it long ago.  Everything else was just observation and studying the new species.

The male half-breed starts to rape Sara, and Dean rushes in to help her, but all he gets is smashed around the lab some more, and bitten in the leg.  Man, these aliens like it rough.

You would think with the number of injuries Dean gets, from burning his hand, to an alien biting his leg, with the aliens fast healing abilities and need to replicate, they'd go somewhere with that.  But no, they just like hurting Dean for some reason.

Anyways, the distraction of biting Dean is enough for Abbot to run in and use a handsaw against the creature's neck.  Careful, I wouldn't be surprised if they're into that too.  Dean uses the time to grab the good alien, and escape.

They really will break your heart!

Dean gets away, but the other creature isn't quite dead, and pins Abbot to the wall and kills him, before it too dies from the wounds it received.  Dean tries to tell his professor he'll be okay, which would be more believable if half his spine wasn't splattered on the bricks behind them.

Abbot takes an awful long time to die, considering, and warns Dean that the half-breeds will keep coming, so he should take the eggs and continue their work, create the new species.  And doom humanity, but that part never gets mentioned.

But don't worry, Abbot gets better and goes into hiding, starting a carnival where he can further examine and experiment upon freaks of nature and people with super powers.  Now all he needs is a cheerleader with a healing factor...

Once the fight is over, the survivors discuss what to do.  Sara's all for keeping her eggs and making more, and while Dean patches his leg up, he makes two great observations.  The first is that Sara's life is in danger.  Gee, ya think?  And the second is that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should.  Like, oh, make three sequels to a mediocre alien sex movie?

With all the time they spend here, they should just buy the land.

After disposing of the doctor's body by way of viking funeral, Dean returns to the house to find it even emptier than he'd made it already, and goes looking for Sara.  He finds her and her little black dress back on the prowl.  Surprisingly, she's at what I think is a church to find a guy.  Even more surprisingly, she finds one.  But not so surprisingly, it's Dean she's snogging.

She starts undressing the undersexed college student, and he has a moment of clarity, telling her to stop.  He may want her, but I would not be surprised if he's seen photos of her previous victims, and is unwilling to share their fate.  She can't explain why, but Dean knows something is up.  She's trying to continue Abbot's work, since it's what he wanted, and because it will continue her bloodline.  And that's good enough for Dean, so let the Fuckening begin.

Or not, since Dean manages to fight his hormones.  Someone needs to make up their mind, damnit.

Rather than bone the hot blonde, which is likely wise for HIS continued survival, Dean heads back to his dorm room, where he learns his roomie has been chatting up the online porn professor some more.

Cut to the surprisingly real Amelia stopping at a middle of nowhere gas station where she fills up and heads to the little aliens' room. Inside, she stares at her breasts like she's noticing them for the first time.  Oh wait, just a rash on her chest.  The guy filling her tank decides to barge in on her while she's topless, and...wait, that's kinda rude, isn't it?

She seems unsurprised by his intrusion, and instead decides to bang the guy right there and...yeah, that just is not sanitary by any stretch of the imagination.  But we are long past time for someone to get laid in a Species movie, that's for sure.

Amelia drives off after having her fun, and the rest of the gas station flunkies finally find Tom, dead in the rest room with a few missing pieces.  That must mean that, gasp of surprise, the hot professor is a hybrid too.

He needed that screw like he needed another hole in the head.

She arrives at the college and finds Hastings pretty quickly.  This is why anonymity is good.  Of course, corresponding from a .edu address likely narrowed the search down considerably.  I love that she just casually struts around naked at a college dorm.  Why couldn't my days in college be like this?

Amelia starts asking lots of questions about the data Hastings sent her, and it is a lot of questions he can't answer.  This is why you don't cheat off your roommate's notes, people.  It never ends well.

She sees through his lies, and tells Hastings he'd better keep her happy, and that is some strong advice.  That's when Dean returns from a jog and catches a glimpse of the woman in their room, and runs off knowing she can't be good news.

Hastings with a girl?? Things are seriously wrong!

He ducks into someone else's room, and the alien kills the person standing outside for shits and giggles.  Dean grabs a bat to defend himself, and obviously forgets how well that worked out for him last time.

Just as Amelia is about to bust through the door, her alien sense goes off, and she can tell Sara is nearby.  She disappears, and Dean runs away like a scared little girl.  And almost slips in the blood puddle from the girl he sacrificed to save his own ass.

Dean sees Amelia toss Hastings into her car, and he thinks about pursuing, but won't get very far on foot.  A nearby car quietly honks, and the government agent lurking throughout the movie is sitting inside, and finally decides to enter the plot and chat with Dean.

He explains the plot so far to anyone walking in late.  Cue teaming up for great justice so they can end the threat of the hybrids once and for all.  Which I might buy if I didn't have Species 4 within spitting distance.

The girls, who seem awfully chummy, take Hastings back to Abbot's lab, and Amelia uses some spiky encouragement in the kid's leg to get him to focus.  Because blinding pain near my nuts always helps me concentrate.

Dean looks for a way to kill the aliens, and states what we already know about the half-breeds, and how that weakness won't work on Sara.  Yes, we have reached the stating the obvious portion of our show.  Meanwhile, Hastings thinks he's figured out how to make more Sara-like creatures, and gets about his work on that, because the alternative is less pretty.

Just as he's about to implant an embryonic sac, the cavalry arrives and sends a gas canister through the basement window.  While the aliens choke, Hastings grabs the can of Sara's eggs and runs away.

Hastings meets up with the guys, and they drive off to lure away the aliens.  Well, alien, since Amelia dies from the gas.  They head off to the power plant, to get back to that plot point.  We never get back to the atomic power thing, but at least they ARC reactor was more than an expensive backdrop.

The trio smash through the gate, and the hired security is utterly ineffectual at stopping them.  But his attempts with the humans pale in comparrison to when Sara shows up.  He sees the not quite Giger creature, stands there stunned, and she lashes out and cuts him right in two.

Eat half now, save the rest for later!

Dean runs off to do...whatever he's doing, and the other two use the eggs to distract Sara long enough for him to do...that stuff.  Which apparently has to do with depressurizing the fusion reactor.  If you say so, movie.

Meanwhile, Sara finds the other two, and Hastings surmises she's following the eggs.  I'd complain about how we already knew that, but the government agent does that for me.  Thank you.

Anyways, they lead her on a merry chase, while the girl in suit jumps around the power plant in a most unbelievable manner.  They're not even trying anymore with the wire work.

They see Dean conveniently below them ducking into some access tunnels, and toss the eggs to him, so he can lead Sara back to where he was, basically.  If not for needing time to set things up, this would all seem terribly convoluted.  Heck, it still does.

Inside the reactor chamber, Dean is followed by another security guard, who dies almost as quickly as his friend, but not as coolly, when a surprise return from Amelia gets him a spike through the chest.  The guard falls off the catwalk and into the chewy, glowy center of the reactor core.  Well, that can't be safe.

They really went outside the box to cast the new Freddy Kruger.

Amelia spikes Dean and takes the eggs, but doesn't quite kill him.  She'd rather do that with a kiss and punch out the back of his skull.  Gotta love the Species classics.

Sara shows up to watch, and Dean powers up the reactor.  This makes the whole chamber shake, and send the egg container rattling off the catwalks to follow the cop into the bright center of fusion.  I really hope that wasn't a deliberate part of the plan, because that strains even my credulity.

Back in the control room, Dean's sidekicks watch as things go critical, which wasn't part of the plan.  Or not part of the plan they were made aware of.  Looks like Dean is more than willing to blow the whole place up to kill the aliens.  Yay Dean!  But if he doesn't close off the chamber, the explosion will vent into the atmosphere.  Boo Dean!

Sara decides to save Dean from her fellow alien, for whatever reason, and tosses Amelia down into the reactor too.  Man, it must be getting crowded down there.  Dean's GameBoy...er, remote for the reactor facility almost joins the rest of the junk down there, but he catches it just in time.

Which means he manages to close the shaft, but not before Amelia reaches up and grabs Sara, pulling her into the reactor core.  Dean seems broken up over this, but I don't think they'd have a great relationship after he scrambled her eggs.

Enough is enough! I have had it with these mothafuckin' aliens in these mothafuckin' girls!

Things go boom, the room shakes, but nothing major happens otherwise.  I think I've been in worse earthquakes.  I have to say, there's irony, and I bet deliberately so, of the aliens being killed in 'a shaft'.

We get to see a news report with the agent giving interviews, explaining that they don't really know what happened, and that the plant was being accessed by the missing Doctor Turner.  Well, he thought of everything to explain it all away.  Well, except for all the other dead bodies.

It's nice to see the movie is over, and all the aliens are gone, so we can...aww come on!  No!  Just end!  No final scene to drag things out more!

Sigh.  Cut to three weeks later, and Hastings is poking around Abbot's cleaned out home, and he comes across a naked kid.  Noooo, just end.

He freaks out, having much the same reaction as I, and tries to run.  But a still alive Sara blocks his way.  He skirts around her though and goes into the basement, finding Dean working on fixing up the smashed lab.

We cut back to the reactor room, where we see that Sarah did NOT fall all the way, and Dean helped her up and out of the shaft.  He also found some remains of the half-breed and used that to create the new kid on the block.  Riiight.

And they all lived happily ever after. Until the aliens DESTROYED HUMANITY!

The two aliens head off into the sunset, and Dean asks why she saved him on the catwalk, since her eggs were gone, and she had no use for him.  Maybe because she has more feelings than we suspect?  Or maybe because he actually did make her a mate, she was right to do so.

Hastings points out the downside of making Sara a boyfriend, and Dean says no one should be alone.  But the big twist is, the guy is a sterile alien.  Which won't really help them achieve the whole goals of breeding and probably make them angry in the long run, and you would think this is setup for the sequel.  And since the aliens can sense flaws, why wouldn't Sara sense this one?

Yeah, setup that is completely ignored.

AUTOPSY REPORT

Video: Another big budget, if direct to video, movie so things actually look pretty decent.  Maybe a little too compressed on the DVD, but overall it looks good.  The effects are a bit cheap on the costumes, which is a sign of the budget.  But at the same time, they get good mileage out of the gore.

Audio: A decent enough 5.1 mix, with some nice surrounds and solid dialogue channel.  Hooray for budgets.

Special Features: A good commentary with the writer, director, and actor who played Dean.  Pretty informative, and gets into the hows and whys of a direct to video sequel after so many years, and the hurdles they had to overcome with their budget.  The featurettes are less interesting, but not bad.

First Blood: A baby alien kills Abbot's fellow soldier almost five minutes into the movie.  And it's all downhill from there.

Best Corpse: How do you not give a shout out to a cop sliced clean in half, and done very gooily?  I highly approve.

Sound Bite: "I'll steal equipment, I'll bury bodies, just please, don't give me anymore dating advice." Dean to Abbot after being given 'the talk' about humans and aliens.

Blood Type - A-: The gore in this movie is great.  The joy of having an Unrated DVD, I guess.  Blood splatters everywhere, there's goo everywhere, exploding stomachs, melting aliens...great stuff.

Sex Appeal: It's a Species movie.  Naked aliens abound.

Movie Rating: I almost hate to say this.  But so far, the Species movies actually get better with each sequel.  It still isn't great.  It's still got plot holes aplenty, but it's overall solid.  The acting is actually pretty good, besides Sunny/Sara.  But that might be deliberate, and got better as the movie went on.  Robert Knepper is worth watching in anything.  And the story is a proper continuation from the others, and actually takes the time to flesh people out.  That's more because of the budgetary concerns, and they have to space out the big action moments, but that ends up working to this movie's advantage.  They took what they had, and made a decent enough story out of it.  It still has a direct to video stink to it, but only slightly.  I give this four out of five muscly alien babies.

Entertainment Value: And all that stuff works to the entertainment value too.  It's not as cheesy and over the top as I like, but it is eminently watchable.  The blood and gore is superb for this sort of thing, and made all the better for being mostly practical instead of CG.  I was quite entertained for my almost two hours.  But it could've been more Trisklike.  Three out of five porn star professors.