Synopsis:

This is a shorter version of Mimic by Guillermo Del Toro. 15 minutes are cut, scenes are heavily reorganized in order to make the movie less scattered. New 2:35:1 aspect ratio, color a bit desaturated.

Intentions:

Mimic is an okay movie from a great director. The story suffers from some obvious déja-vu feeling (Jurassic Park, Aliens…) but is descent enough to be entertaining. The directing is nice but the movie is too scattered for my taste. Always switching from scenes to scenes, letting the audience in the middle of plenty of little average cliffhangers. In other words, the movie drags a lot. Add to this a music score that always ends EACH scenes on a high note, in order to create a tension that is just not there and you end with a movie that has all the elements to be great but makes you cringe too many times. I tried to cut and reorganized scenes to make, hopefuly, a better progression of the story, I’m not saying my edit removes all the flaws of the original, but it is a version I personally prefer to watch.

Change List:

Some separate scenes are now joined in order to really follow the characters in their actions. A scene set in the midle of the movie is now put near the begining for better characters exposition. Several scenes are not presented in the same order of events of the original. Number of completely deleted scenes: 6 heavily shortened scenes: 3 (See details on the cutlist bellow) numbers of small cuts removing few seconds all along the movie: about 30 This edit also has: - a time reversed shot, - an extended (looped) shot, - a shot taken from one of my deleted scenes. - removed voices etc… The entire movie has been cropped (almost shot by shot) in order to reformatte the 1.85:1 aspect ratio to 2:35:01. Some new camera movement added for the audience to see everything needed (plus a little camera shake added when a Judas appears from the ground. That shot can be seen in the Trailer of the edit) The color has been desaturated a bit, both in order to bring some, I don’t know, “70?s classic feel” to the movie...

Additional Notes:

Of a total of 50 scenes, here is the new order of my edit: 3-4-5-6-23-8-7-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-24-28-21-25-26-27-29-30- 32-33-34-35-37-39-36-38-40-41-42-43-44-45-46-47-48-49 Complete deleted scenes: 1-2-20-22-31-50 - 1: The opening credit (some shots now used for the main animated menu of the DVD) - 2: Suzan and peter at the hospital. -20: Suzan meets the doctor at the library -22: Chuy meeting the Judases at night. -31: Remy and the doctor practicing autopsy of a baby Judas -32: Happy ending. Heavily shortened scenes: 12-23-33

Other Sources:

Special Thanks:

Thanks to JMB for providing honest and useful feedback on my workprint.