Species – The Awakening

Species: The Awakening
Home Video release poster
Based on	Characters by Dennis Feldman
Written by	Ben Ripley
Directed by	Nick Lyon
Starring	Ben Cross Helena Mattsson Dominic Keating Marlene Favela
Music by	Kevin Haskins Paul Cristo
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
Production
Executive producer	Johnny O. Lopez
Producers	Frank Mancuso Jr. Lorenzo O'Brien
Cinematography	Jaime Reynoso
Editor	Robert Komatsu
Running time	98 minutes
Production companies	MGM Television 360 Pictures
Original release
Network	Syfy
Release	September 29, 2007 (2007-09-29)

Species: The Awakening is a 2007 science fiction action thriller film and the fourth and final installment of the Species film series. The film was directed by Nick Lyon and starring Ben Cross, Helena Mattsson, Dominic Keating and Marlene Favela. It is a stand-alone sequel and 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.

Plot

Miranda Hollander is a beautiful and smart young woman. She is a college professor and lives with her "uncle", Tom Hollander who works in a museum; he adopted her after a car crash killed her parents. 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 passes out 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 and kills several people. When Tom finally arrives at the hospital the following morning, he finds bodies everywhere. Tom locates Miranda, injects her with human hormones and begins driving 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 while they were both still in college. Tom has been injecting her with human hormones since her childhood to suppress her alien DNA. (Thus she never entered a cocoon stage and aged as human.) 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, another human and alien DNA hybrid who also serves as his assistant and lover—she is sterile to prevent offspring. 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; her changes to alien form are her body's way of fighting back as her human form has a weaker immune system. 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 starts acting odd, joking about having sex with Azura. Tom checks her blood as she invites him to get drunk and have sex in their hotel room; he tells her to rest, believing she is delirious from the procedure. She leaves in a huff. Tom finds Forbes did a sloppy job; Miranda's hormones are unstable, causing her alien side to become increasingly dominant. Driven by her alien sex drive, Miranda manages to seduce the innkeeper, another hybrid; however she kills him mid-process upon finding he is sterile. She goes to a bar for potential mates, seeing that a female singer in a provocative red dress is garnering a lot of attention. She sneaks backstage, intimidating the singer into giving up her dress.

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". Making things worse is that Miranda is no longer sterile, thanks to the new stem cells. 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 hybrid child 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. Just when Azura has Tom cornered, Miranda attacks her and apparently kills Azura. However, Azura rises again and fatally impales Miranda before Tom kills Azura with a shotgun. In human form, Miranda thanks Tom for giving her life before dying.

A saddened Tom turns on all the gas burners and tanks in Forbes' house and leaves, and as he walks away the house explodes.

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

In 2006, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer began on production of another sequel to Species. An MGM/360 Production, filming commenced in October, 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 the 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. Eventually Nick Lyon, the director of the film, gave the film's final name on his official website. Like the previous films, the original film's logo is used for the main title.

Reception

Den of Geek gave the film a positive review, saying it exceeded his expectations for a straight-to-DVD release.

External links

• Species: The Awakening at IMDb
• Species: The Awakening at AllMovie