Aberration (1997)

That was an excellent one.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The film opens with Amy (Pamela Gidley - "Brigitte" from the Pretender series) driving to her new home with cat and fish. A couple of minutes into her journey, she removes sunglasses and wig. Uh-oh. Either she just committed a crime, or is escaping an abusive boyfriend. Her paranoia upon entering the house indicates the latter.As she turns into the driveway, she's observed by a scientist (Aussie cutie Simon Bossell) collecting mysterious, goopy samples near the property. Hmm... young, good-looking woman, young good-looking man? What are the chances they'll get together? As Amy settles in, we meet a couple of the locals. The typical crazy & his dog and the kind general store manager. But, wait - this is a horror film! Let's leave this Little House on the Prairie nonsense & see some gore!Finally, we glimpse our monster - well, its viewpoint, as it goes after the crazy recluse's dog. Buh-bye Rover. Amy's cat is similarly bothered in the house - could the beast be in her home? Could there be more than one?!? Ayup. We finally see the creatures. Lizards of some bastardized origin - they're able to evolve from generation to generation. Thanks, Monsanto! Within hours, the newly born spawn has nifty defense mechanisms against what thwarted their parents.So, basically it's multigenerational mutant annihilation for our two heroes. A lot of blowing things up, really.Oh - and that abusive boyfriend? Yes, he makes an appearance. He's an a-hole who enjoys his battle with the so-called "Aberrations" just a little too much. In a combo Lifetime/Syfy flick - he really doesn't stand a chance. A totally hammy performance by Valeriy Nikolaev, but a fun stretch.The movie is slow-paced, and could've been 15-20 minutes shorter. It also uses some cliché tactics (including the 'thrown cat' trick and asinine, punny lines). The puppets used for the creatures had some good detail, and the 'enhancements' were clever. But, this movie didn't know whether it wanted to be a drama, sci-fi, or horror. It was a little too muddled to fit neatly into any of those categoriesOverall, a decent flick with flaws and some major predictability. Editing could have been tighter, but the casting choices were good, and there were some clever shots to impress cinematographers. And the cat? A total PROFESSIONAL! The scenes with the critters seemed a bit campy - like "Gremlins" meets "Munchies". But, still a watchable, if dramatic, romp.

Does the movie have problems? Yes, but I happily ignore them every time I've watched, which has to be more than 20 times now. I love creature feature movies, and I love monsters that evolve as the movie goes on, so I'm probably biased. Hey, I'm always a Blue Mage in Final Fantasy games when possible, so go figure. I loved the movie so much in fact, that it inspired me to make a role playing game where you got to be one of the creatures, though I also expanded it significantly. The role play has run since 2009 (currently the game is on the Escapist and that started in 2011), and seems to be more popular than the movie itself. I thought that instead of starting off as lizards, they'd start as slimes, but as the geckos evolve as they eat other living things, the slimes would do the same. Instead of ending up as geckos, they'd end up as dragons. So, all in all, I loved this movie. If you're able to watch for enjoyment sake and looking at the high concept and not the presentation, then you won't find many movies more fun than this in the same genre except maybe Mimic or The Relic.

Like others here, I'm amazed how such material gets good reviews. Granted, this thing is low budget. And it was made in the late nineties, before the "perfection" of digital monsters. But there's really no excuse for a contemporary monster movie where the monsters look like they were purchased from a dollar store.Not that I'm trying to be overly critical. The acting is not bad. The camera work is okay. But this is another of those instances where the impoverished budget is readily apparent. Aside from the creature effects, the entire picture seems to take place in a cabin and nearby general store. Which means we're talking isolation, but not of the creative EVIL DEAD type, but of the "We won't have enough money to make this unless we shoot at my parents' cabin" type.Don't get me wrong. The last thing I want to do is discourage young filmmakers - especially ones working on a limited budget. But I would caution them to make sure the centerpiece of their films - the monsters themselves - are worth the ride.

I had mixed thoughts about this movie, but remembering that it was a SciFi Channel made for TV movie, the few things I didn't care for can be overlooked.I love the whole idea behind the lizards. Spontanious molecular regeneration, combined with spontanious evolution made these things quite frightening had I been in the same situation.There were a few ideas they should have thought of in the basis of these lizards however, like having at least one develop rather large. Normally I wouldn't care, but Marshall did recognize the possibility of a Komodo type lizard right in the beginning,...and Marshall,...they have grown to 13.5 feet, ten was not the largest. Also if they were going to go with the whole evolution thing, taking on traits of all reptiles, as well as amphibians, they could have tried making a few of the creatures warm blooded, so the snow outside would not even be safe.As far as acting goes, I thought Pamela Gidley was quite good, and made up for poor Simon Bossell, who over played his character very badly. Valeri Nikolayev from The Saint was quite overplayed as well, however, this was forgivable since his character was quite entertaining, playing something of a Russian prince turned wild west gunslinger.All in all, I was quite amused with this film, and will buy it. No, I didn't find this to be the scariest movie I've ever seen, still, it was quite entertaining. I might even look forward to a sequel, assuming some of the reptiles found a safe haven in Mrs. Miller's car.By the way, I loved Pamela Gidley's hair.