After Mike’s mother dies in a fire he started subconsciously, he realizes that he has the power of pyrokinesis. Returning to his hometown to find answers to his life, like finding his father, he soon realizes someone, Eleven, is after him and will kill anyone who gets in his way.
Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Mike), Douglas O’Keeffe (Eleven), Ingrid Kavelaars (Jessica), Andrew Jackson (Sixty-Six), David Nerman (Sheriff Masterson), Michelle Johnson (Sarah).
The plot to this film is almost ridiculous. To make a comparison, this one is truly Firestarter meets Terminator. It was as if they took concepts from each movie and mashed them together with a tissue paper thin plot and expected it to be epic. Sadly, it doesn’t even qualify as campy or as a B movie since there is no humor.
Acting wasn’t very good but looks worse than it actually is due to the lack of quality of every other facet of the film. The one bright spot was that Gosselaar and Kavelaars seemed to have pretty good energy together.
Apparently a lower budget film, the special effects are ridiculous. Shining a spotlight on water to imply alien presence? Explosions and fires that were poorly done CGI. Lame alien effects. All were poorly done and elementary. Sets were bland and uninteresting. Camera work and sound were both quite poor as well with grainy, out of focus shots and muffled sound in parts. Extended fade to black shots didn’t help either. The biggest problems with this one were that scenes were too brief or incomplete before switching to the next scene and that the movie left many unanswered questions.
Overall this is a plain vanilla sci-fi thriller with a serious lack of energy and depth. Pass on this one and find something better.
Some violence and full frontal female nudity so save this one for the oldest teens and above.
Specimen is no longer showing in any Littleton Colorado movie theatres.
Released: 1996
Reviewed: 11.28.12
Star rating: 2 out of 5
copyright ©2012 Dave Riedel
Remember to click on Subscribe and leave comments!
Comments