Aberration (film)

Infobox Film
name = Aberration


director = Tim Boxell
editing = John Gilbert
producer = Chris Brown,
Tim Sanders
writer = Scott Lew,
Darrin Oura
starring = Pamela Gidley
Simon Bossell
Valeri Nikolayev
Helen Moulder
Norman Forsey
movie_music =
released = September 11, 1997 (Sweden)
runtime = 93 minutes
language = English
imdb_id = 0123371
music = David Donaldson,
Plan 9,
Steve Roche,
Janet Roddick
amg_id = 1:179627
budget = NZD 4,000,000

"Aberration" is a 1997 film directed by Tim Boxell, about a woman trying to escape from mutant lizards in the woods. The lizards look like geckos and they live in a "nest" or bubble that is covered by slime. They evolve every time they get electrocuted, drowned, or burnt.

Tagline

The movie was promoted with the tagline, "Where civilization ends. . . the nightmare begins" [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123371/] .

Plot

Alex Langdon, going by the alias Amy Harding, is a criminal on the run who has used money she's stolen from her ex-boyfriend, a Russian mobster, Uri Romanov, to buy a cabin in the deep woods and a $500 Volkswagen. She settles into her new home with her cat Frankie and an aquarium full of goldfish. She settles down with a paperback novel to read while she eats cake from the box in which it was packaged. However, she discovers that some animal--mice or rats, she thinks--has eaten from the cake. Disgusted, she goes outside to throw the cake away, and encounters her creepy, rifle-toting neighbor, Mr. Peterson, who first asks her if she had seen his dog Florence, which earlier encountered a creature that was not shown on the screen, then warns her to get out while she still can rather than to stay in her cabin during the off season.

She drives to a general store to purchase some traps, but these items are out of stock. More are due to arrive the next day. When she gets back to her cabin, she is surprised that Frankie's food dish is empty because he has been with her all day. The lights go out after she bathes, and she goes to the generator in a shed outside. Slime drips onto her head, and she retreats inside her cabin to wash it off. The cat's bowl, she notices, is empty again.

The next day, she returns to the store and buys $21 worth of rodent traps. The store's owner, Mrs. Miller, insists that she borrow a backpack-mounted extermination tank and some powerful, but illegal, poison. When her car won't start because the wires have been bitten through in an eerie manner, Marshall Clarke, a biology student who stopped by the general store just before Amy arrived, offers her a ride to her cabin where, he says he will be happy to check her residence for rodents or other vermin.

Along the way, he tells her what has brought him to the area. He is conducting field research to try to determine why the local game fauna has disappeared in a relatively short period of time. On their way to the cabin, the station wagon passed by a ravine in which Mr. Petersons missing dog, Florence, laid--dead.

As they search through the cabin, Marshall finds Amy's cat. It has been killed--torn apart and eaten. Reaching into a cabinet Amy's hand gets bitten by a lizard. Marshall spots the lizard and tries to capture it alive in order to take it back as a specimen, however, Amy kills it by spraying a jet of rodenticide at it. Marshall then performs an autopsy on the lizard and discovers that it actually is a tropical lizard which can impossibly be found in the cold northern climate where Amy's cabin is lcoated. He speculates that the lizard was genetically engineered to solve the problem of rat infestations in the place, and that the experiment has horribly gone awry with lethal consequences. They learn that the lizards seek heat and that they feel comfortable in houses due to the heat generated by them, making it hazardous to their occupants. Each time a lizard is killed, the species undergoes an almost instant leap forward in its evolution, becoming impervious to the humans' latest means of attack. As the onslaught continues, Marshall and Amy flee inside Marshall's station wagon, but he stalls it after runnimg it down a snowy slope, into the side of a tree. They set out on foot, to Mr. Peterson's cabin, knowing he owns a vehicle, and find him dead, a victim of the lizards. In hurry, Amy turns on the gas stove, lights a box of matches and throws them at the gas burner, grabs Marshall by the arm and runs outside before Mr. Peterson's house is shattered by an enormous gas explosion, killing all lizards inside with the blast. Unfortunately for them, the explosion also destroys Mr. Peterson's truck.

Without a vehicle, they are forced to return to Amy's cabin by the cold. Back there they encounter the lizards again and decide to destroy them along with their eggs having no other alternative to choose from. Soon they witness the swift process of evolution of the species. Not before long, the lizards are becoming immune to the rodenticide and even develop a thick epidermis that protects them from the bullets of Amy's air rifle. After having been dropped into the aquarium by Amy to drown, and after having devoured the goldfishes in it, one lizard grows gills on its sides prompting Amy to drop a lamp into the aquarium electrocuting the beast instantly. After this incident, the lizards become impervious to electricity. Marshall discovers that the lizards are capable of communicating with each other triggering the almost instant leap into evolution.

After barely having made it through the night, with the radiators turned off to confine the remaining lizards to the warm spaces in the cabin, Marshall and Amy encounter yet another problem, equally as dangerous as the lizards--Uri Romanov, Amy's former mobster-boyfriend, who came to take the money that Amy stole from him. After a brief struggle, Uri proves to be physically stronger and superior to both in the martial arts. He is also armed and upon seeing the lizards approaching, he shoots and kills some five or six of them. One of the lizards is thrown out of the window by the force of the bullet's impact and it lands on the hood of Uri Romanov's SUV into which it must have laid its eggs shortly before it died. Uri then decided to kill both Marshall and Amy and look for the money himself. Joining their efforts, Marshall and Amy manage to shove Uri into the empty fireplace. As he tries to stand up, his head bumps against the trapdoor separating the fireplace from the smokestack causing it to open and drop the lizard eggs including the newly hatched offspring on his head entangling them in his hair. Immediately, the young lizards start to gnaw on his face prompting Amy to put him out of his misery through a bullet to his head.

After the incident, they torch the cabin and escape in Uri Romanov's SUV. Upon driving away, a hatchling drops off the side of the car into the snow. Shortly thereafter they encounter engine failure due to overheating. When Marshall exits and inspects the engine, Amy finds herself being attacked by the creatures. In the struggle for her life, she accidentally locks the car preventing Marshall to open any of the doors. Fortunately she was able to open the lock and exit. Marshall then drops his cigarette into the gas tank causing the vehicle with the lizards inside to explode. In the hope of reaching there alive, Marshall carries unconscious Amy to Mrs. Miller's store. Upon arrival he inspects Amy's leg and discovers in horror that one of the fully grown creatures has burrowed itself into her flesh. Using a heated knife, he manages to extract the creature from her leg and sets forth to kill it with a shovel (after he learns from Mrs. Miller that the store does not sell rifles or arms of any kind except during the hunting season in summer). The elusive lizard then proceeds to kill Mrs. Miller and attempts to blind Marshall by spitting on his eyes but he anticipated that out of experience by wearing sunglasses. Being burnt by Marshall with a makeshift torch, the lizard retreats behind the shelf and grows a fireproof epidermis. Aside from that, it has also grown almost half its size. In panic Marshall finds a flare gun and tries to load it but the lizard leaps at him and bites him. Just as the lizard was about to go in for the kill, Amy picks up the flare gun, shoves the barrel into the lizard's mouth and pulls the trigger causing the beast to explode.

Amy and Marshall collapse in exhaustion and kiss. Roll credits.

External links

*imdb title|id=0123371|title=Aberration