Mimic

92

Mimic is 97 I loved Mimic

Mimic was

a like a mainstream Hollywood horror movie

really

Everyone loves it.

Yeah,

and I know a lot of people dismiss something like Mimic, but Mimic and I go way back.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause if I've got this right, the, the point where you crossed with Guillermo for the first time was on arguably his most difficult film, uh, Mimic.

I just wonder ab- was it a day or two into your work on that you finally met him?

It was my second day.

I was only on Mimic for three days, 'cause if you remember the storyline of Mimic, there were, uh-

Yes

...

So the creature shop, Rick Lazzarini's creature shop, I had done a commercial for them, uh, as an alien before this.

made."Um, but, but it was particularly at a time in which Guillermo del Toro thought his career was almost over.

So that's another... 'Cause, 'cause apparent- 'cause what Mimic or whatever did so bad that he was, like, really freaking out about his future and everything.

And Pedro Almodóvar, like, put his arm around him and was like, "Yo, man, come to Spain and make some shit.

I got you."

I mean, his...

He didn't really have something that really took off until this movie allowed him to then in 2002, uh, do Blade II, which is what really launched him in, you know, Hollywood.

Uh, but yeah, those movies, I really like his first two movies, Cronos and Mimic.

Um, you definitely see that early style there.

Let's hear it.

So after Cronos, we hit his 1997 sophomore film, Mimic.

Now, the retrospective explicitly flags this as his weakest film.

It does, yeah.

It's a sci-fi monster movie about giant genetically engineered bugs in the New York subway system, which sounds cool, but wait, if we are charting a path of cinematic masterpieces, why do we need to dwell on a '90s misfire?

That's a fair question.

Like, honestly, is Mimic really a failure of his vision, or are we just looking at a classic case of studio interference suffocating a young auteur? Because knowing what we know about the production battles on that film, it feels a bit unfair to call it a baseline for his talent.

That is a highly perceptive pushback, and you're absolutely right to bring up the studio interference.

Uh, if you look at my Letterboxd, I just...

I watched Mimic from Guillermo del Toro.

Mm.

And in that review, I said, "I fucking love monster movies." Um-

he likes, he likes to sympathize with his monsters.

Um, which I'm gonna kind of skip around, 'cause I watched all these movies kind of in one day.

The next movie I watched, uh, was Mimic from him.

Yeah.