Progeny (1998) Brian Yuzna

Progeny, a late nineties effort from the people that brought us the Re-Animator movies. Stuart Gordon directed the original Re-Animator along with the stellar From Beyond and Dolls. He wrote the story for this movie. Brian Yuzna, whose first film wish the fascinating Society, directed the Re-Animator sequels and directs Progeny. Screaming Mad George, effects wizard for the two Re-Animator sequels, does the effects here. Unfortunately they are the only thing worth checking out in Progeny, an unimpressive work in every other respect.

Even some of the creatures are pretty weak. At first the white gummy-like aliens were captivating, but they got a little too much screen time in the white light. An insemination scene with bug-type organs looks cheep and has been done better in other movies. One birthing scene was memorable, but lost some points for turning out to be just a dream sequence. I hate those. The last shot of alien baby FX was absolutely fantastic, but that does not come until the final five minutes of the film. It too could have been a dream sequence, things get foggy. When this movie loses it's grip on reality it just heads right to the shitter. We get a truly lame twist and ending to this film with lots of unexplained bullshit that we don't even want to know the answer to. Think X-Files. I've had enough of that shit for life.

I'm not feeling charitable, so no points awarded for this movie taking place in Newport Beach, the city I live in right now. Hoag Hospital is right next door to me. The medical center where this movie takes place is fictional and I'm pretty sure the movie was not shot on location. Is there alien mayhem going down at Hoag? Oh shit.

In one scene the mother tries to abort the evil seed with a coat hanger. In the next she is angry because her husband wants the pregnancy terminated. What we get here are random outbursts without explanation.


The trailers that aired before this movie were so fucking bad, except for Stuart Gordon's Space Truckers.
One bid of wisdom from this movie in the form of dialogue, seriously. The subject at hand is alien probing.

"Why would they do this?"

"I don't know. I don't know if we can know. What do you figure animals think when we experiment on them?"

Think about that.