DNA (1997) Review

Tagline: Don't Mess with Mother Nature!

DNA (1997) Review

 

If you took Alien, Predator, a bit of Jurassic Park, and a touch of Terminator 2, threw them in a blender with only enough budget for a direct-to-video feature starring a mostly no name cast, you’d get DNA. This genetic hybrid, if you will, is something I rented from the video store at a pretty young age around the same time I became a fan of all those other movies. I was instantly drawn to it because of the VHS cover, and was minorly obsessed with the cover as a kid, but I had only vague memories of liking the actual movie. Still, it stuck in my brain as the years went on.

A doctor in a small village in the depths of the Borneo jungle helps an evil scientist find a rare beetle with special enzymes in it. Two years after the scientist discovers the bones of an ancient creature in the jungle (revered by the natives as “Balakai”), a series of gruesome attacks leads to the doctor being recruited by the CIA to track down the evil scientist. It turns out this Balakai creature was resurrected using the enzyme from the beetle, and is an alien that the scientist was planning on cloning and selling, but it proved too hostile. The heroes try to evade Balakai, the evil scientist, and his band of mercenaries for the rest of the movie.

After watching it again all these years later, I’ve discovered that DNA really is an awful movie, and yet, despite blatantly ripping off much better movies and being evidently cheap, it’s still entertaining. I genuinely like the premise of an alien that died a long time ago being resurrected and going around killing people in a jungle. In fact, the jungle setting is an enjoyable aspect to the movie, and gave me some Anaconda vibes at times. A large portion takes place at night, though, and some of these scenes are a bit hard to see. The acting and dialogue are serviceable, the music is not half bad, but the only reasons to see this are to see Balakai killing people and things getting blown up.

The creature is pretty well designed, and kept mostly hidden in the first half, but when they reveal it in full toward the end, oh boy, do they ever show the thing in all its rubber suit glory. There are also a handful of horrendous cgi shots, but at least they tried to use mainly practical creature effects, which were created by KNB EFX Group, probably most famous today for The Walking Dead. As for the miniature effects, they are so obviously fake you won’t be able to help but chuckle, especially whenever an exploding helicopter is involved.

So what, exactly, does DNA copy from the movies I mentioned at the start of this review? Well, there’s a scene in which the main characters come across an abandoned compound (similar to Alien and Aliens), scenes in which characters are chased by the creature through the jungle and compound (similar to Jurassic Park), and there’s even a part when a dying African-American character detonates a bomb to kill some bad guys (just like in T2). Although it copies so much from other movies, there are still some surprises. A kid tags along with the main characters, and even though he’s often in danger, you never really think he’s going to be seriously hurt—which makes it even more shocking when Balakai kills him! I guess this happens in order to motivate the doctor to take down Balakai once and for all at the end. He uses the same techniques Arnold Schwarzenegger used to take down the Predator, though not to the same end result.

DNA is worth a watch if you’re into the right kind of low-budget sci-fi horror—the kind that takes itself more seriously than anything made by the SyFy channel, but still fails to achieve a level of quality that makes it something audiences can take seriously. There’s a fun mix of adventure and horror and action, and even though you could just watch the much better movies it’s ripping off instead, I would say it’s still worth a few unique laughs.