Mimic

Long after the Red Menace, the Mafia, serial killers, renegade CIA agents, and Arab terrorists have faded from the big screen, we will always have bugs -- large ones. Foreshadowing Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers and borrowing heavily from Them! and Alien is Guillermo Del Toro's Mimic. Numbingly relentless in its gratuitous suspense -- and be forewarned, not only does the dog get it in this one, but the kids as well -- and suffocating in its portentous atmosphere, with the rainiest sets since Seven and more goo and body fluids than in Men in Black, Mimic almost pulls off its imitation of a thoughtful, well-crafted science-fiction thriller. In the end, though, style wins out over thought and craft.

In another demonstration of the irrelevance of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, Mira Sorvino plays a scientist brought in to defeat a child-killing plague spread by cockroaches. She genetically designs a new species of predatory insects to exterminate the vermin, and for the first time since the days of Peter Stuyvesant, Manhattan apartments are roach-free.

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature, though, and the new insects evolve into hideous monsters the size of an NBA center with a thirst for blood and the knack of mimicking the appearance of human beings. With lots of scary dark places in the New York subway and sewer systems to hide in, the bugs give Sorvino and spouse/colleague Jeremy Northam a rough time as our heroes combat them with the technological equivalent of a rolled-up newspaper. Perhaps there's something creepy about motherhood and gender roles lurking below the surface -- Sorvino's character is infertile, the insect curse comes as a result of saving children, and the bugs are almost all female, not to mention a grisly scene of literal male-bashing. But that's probably one stone best not turned over. Opens Friday at the Lincoln Mall, Narragansett, Showcase, Starcase, Tri-Boro, Westerly, and Woonsocket cinemas.

-- Peter Keough