Miranda (Helena Mattsson) is an university professor. She lives with her only family, uncle Tom Hollander (Ben Cross). Miranda is found unconscious and naked in the park. She is taken to the hospital where she transforms into an alien hybrid and kills several people. Tom arrives to find Miranda unconscious and goes on the run with her. He reveals the truth of her origins. They travel to Mexico in search of his former research partner Forbes McGuire (Dominic Keating) who helped create Miranda from combining human and alien DNA.This is the fourth movie of the franchise and a TV B-movie at heart. The horror and thriller aspect is only a shadow of the original. Mattsson is statuesque with sufficient acting skills. Ben Cross can't do much with this material. There seems to be alien DNA everywhere which devalues Miranda's singular potential for danger. There are long stretches where the film flatlines. This is not that good even considering its limited aspirations.

Beautiful blonde college professor Helena Mattsson (as Miranda) finishes a lecture and goes to see her uncle and father-figure Ben Cross (as Tom Hollander), a scientist and museum worker. They consider a move to Oxford, where Ms. Mattsson has a job offer. It seems like a good idea. Then, "Species: The Awakening" happens. Cross tells Mattsson about her DNA dilemma and they go to Mexico, where they seek help from similarly positioned Dominic Keating (as Forbes McGuire) and Marlene Favela (as Azura)...In Mexico, Cross discovers nuns are really wicked cool and the cab drivers can take you for a wild ride. Director Nick Lyon gives the movie a much-needed lift with this part. However, Cross is far too serious and accomplished an actor for his part. He might have added some tongue-in-cheek, if asked. Of course, the movie takes itself too seriously. It's really only titillation and alien effects; it's not serious science fiction. The women are beautiful, but diseased. The story is easy to follow, but not really engaging.*** Species: The Awakening (10/2/07) Nick Lyon ~ Ben Cross, Helena Mattsson, Dominic Keating, Marlene Favela

Species: The Awakening (2007) * 1/2 (out of 4) The fourth and so far final film in the SPECIES series has college professor Miranda Hollander (Helena Mattsson) going on a killing spree, which is something she doesn't understand. Her "uncle" (Ben Cross) takes her to Mexico where he informs her that he, along with another man, created her in a lab using DNA from an alien and this is why she's starting to act out. The uncle wants to save her life so he visits his old friend who has been creating all sorts of half-woman, half-alien creatures. SPECIES: THE AWAKENING is pretty much what you'd expect out of a direct-to-DVD release and that's a film with a few good moments but not enough to make it worth your while. As you'd expect, all you really need to make a SPECIES sequel is a good looking blonde willing to take her clothes off and the producers were able to find another one in Mattsson. As with the previous women, she too turns in a good performance as I found her quite convincing early on as the college lady but she's also very believable when she turns into the sex pot looking for a mate. As needed, she's certainly got a great looking body and knows how to use her sexuality. Cross is also pretty good in his role but the screenplay does him very little in terms of good writing. Dominic Keating plays the other scientist and is pretty good as well. The unrated version of this film features quite a bit of violent footage with a lot of deaths by the creatures tongue including one rather good shot of it going through a woman's skull and coming out of her eye. The actual CGI effect isn't all that believable but at least the money shot is worth watching. There's other bloody footage throughout the film as most of the deaths are rather gory and we even get another cocoon sequence where the beautiful lady gets to be born (nude of course). The biggest problem with the film is that the pacing is just so slow and we've seen this same story so many times that it's really hard to care about what's going on or how it's all going to end. There's also a cheap feel that hangs over the movie so this here is clearly for die hard fans only.

This fourth entry is surprisingly the best out of the series when it comes down to the sequels. Yet the movie is probably best to watch when you don't know any of the previous Species movies, fore in that way the mystery and originality of the movie will work out the best. It's also really not essential to watch any of the previous Species movies before watching this one, fore this movie and its story have basically very little to do with any of the previous entries, that were about aliens trying to breed and being hunt down by the military. This movie takes a totally different direction and approach. As a sequel and especially as a third sequel to the 1995 movie, this movie is surprisingly refreshing in its ideas and executions. No, of course it's no brilliant movie but I'm still raving about it since it's so surprisingly much better than any of its sequels and original as well. Of course not a lot of people are willing to give this movie a chance but I'll urge more people to see this, since it's simply a fine genre movie that is worth watching. It isn't the best or most exciting movie but it's a professionally made one, which makes this a maintaining movie to watch. It doesn't suffer from some of the problems of the other sequels, that had some bad actors in it, among other things. This movie has some good characters and even better actors portraying them. Ben Cross is a good actor and a nice leading man for this movie. Hard to believe he already was 60 years old at the time of this movie! Still I would wish the movie was a bit more exciting. It's a bit lacking in action and definitely lacking in gore. All of the other Species movies were filled with gore and nudity, while this movie features basically little to none of any. It's a quite tame movie, with the expectations of some sequences, that are used to set up a specific mood and tone. The movie is a bit of a bore in parts and often drags on for too long with its story, which is the fault of its writing that offers the movie too little. Some things don't make a lot of sense within this movie and story and some things just don't really add up. However because it's such a fine put together, with a good visual look over it and some nice actors involved, this movie works out as a perfectly watchable one. 6/10