Species: The Awakening

aka Species 4

2007
Written by Ben Ripley
Based on characters created by Dennis Feldman
Directed by Nick Lyon

The Species franchise transitioned from femme fueled Freudian nightmare to direct to video science fiction dreck so quickly that by installment number four materialized – Species: The Awakening – I had long ago put it on my lower priorities list. There, Species 4 sat, until one day I restumbled across it and decided to try it out. After all, I will get an answer to what 1902 is! (That’s the number that the camera panned to ominously at the conclusion of Species III, thus it must mean something!)

Species: The Awakening continues the premise of the prior installment in stating that there are already members of the alien Species living amongst us in hiding. While in Species 3 they were all surviving offspring of Eve or the astronaut guy from Species 2, here they were created in a lab in Mexico that does the same research that created the original alien creature in the first film. Except now in a much more safe form, in that they only kill a lot of people instead of every person.

Our lead Miranda Hollander (Helena Mattsson) is one just creation of this group, a young woman who doesn’t even know she’s the product of alien DNA technology, living a quiet life as a blooming academic with a bright future ahead of her. She’s raised by her uncle Tom (Ben Cross), who unbeknownst to her but beknownst to us, helped create her before abandoning the research because of moral quandaries. But once she gets sick and begins reverting back to Species form and goes on a killing spree, he now needs to reconnect with his former partner in order to save her life.

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