Progeny starts as ER doctor Craig Burton (Arnold Vosloo) is chatting to a shrink named Dr. Susan Lamarche (Lindsay Course) as he's been worried lately & unable to concentrate, Craig says his recent troubles began on the night of September the 20th while he was having sex with his wife Sherry (Jillian McWhirter) & he saw a strange bright white light & then the next two hours are missing before he remembers shooting his load into Sherry. The missing two hours & the bright light are a definite concern though. That night Sherry gives Craig the good news that she is pregnant & is pretty sure they conceived on the 20th, Craig becomes even more worried & when he gets his sperm count back from the lab & it reads virtually zero he wonders just who's baby it is since his pencil doesn't have any lead in it. Then he hears of similar accounts on TV of people being abducted by aliens, could his wife have been kidnapped & impregnated by aliens? Craig hopes an ultra sound will show just what exactly Sherry has in her womb & he doesn't like the results...
Directed by Brian Yuzna I quite liked Progeny for what it was, a simple & straight forward sci-fi based shocker. The script by Aubrey Solomon takes itself extremely seriously which actually works well considering the material & to me felt like some sort of mutant offspring between Rosemary's Baby (1968) & The X Files (1993 - 2002) if that's something you could imagine. A fair amount of the time is spent on the paranoia that Sherry & Craig feel about the baby & pregnancy which is alright but we, the audience that is, already know that Sherry is carrying an alien baby because the film has made that pretty clear from the word go so all the ordinary explanations offered up by other character's are a bit pointless & feel like a cheap way to pad the film out a bit as it's never in doubt. Luckily there are some nicely twisted scenes here, a dream sequence as Sherry drops her placenta & the alien baby emerges from it & a cool scene that looks like it belongs in a Japanese Hentai like La Blue Girl (1992) or Legend of the Overfiend (1989) where she is impregnated by a slimy alien. It moves along at a nice pace, it doesn't outstay it's welcome clocking in at about 90 minutes & is something a little bit different in the horror genre which isn't really known for it's originality. I have to mention the ending too which I liked as new dad Craig is beamed aboard the alien spacecraft & is seen holding a mutant freak half human half alien baby in a quite unsettling & amusingly downbeat final scene. Overall I liked Progeny although it's probably not a film for everyone given the subject matter & a few suitably yucky gross out scenes of gore.
Director Yuzna knows how to turn in a decent horror flick & Progeny is no exception, it looks nice enough with his usual trademark gore. The aliens themselves look alright if a little silly & seem to be a mixture of animatronic on set puppets & CGI computer effects which work together well enough & I particularly like their Octopus like tentacle arms. I wouldn't say it's scary but the storyline is in suitably bad taste & outrageous enough to be memorable. Gore wise what's here is effective, there's a shot of an alien bursting through someones stomach while someones stomach is sliced open exposing all their guts & insides. The special effects are pretty good & there's a fair amount of blood splashed around along with a fair amount of female full frontal nudity if that's your thing.
With a supposed budget of about $2,500,000 this had a decent budget & it show's with some nice aliens & special effects as already mentioned, it's well made with a pretty good cast who all do fine.
Progeny is a film I didn't expect to like that much but Yuzna kept things moving & some of his trademark gore scenes make Progeny a reasonable way to pass 90 odd minutes, it ain't no masterpiece but to be honest it doesn't try to be. A good solid entertaining horror sci-fi with an agreeably nasty edge, I liked it.
Directed by Brian Yuzna I quite liked Progeny for what it was, a simple & straight forward sci-fi based shocker. The script by Aubrey Solomon takes itself extremely seriously which actually works well considering the material & to me felt like some sort of mutant offspring between Rosemary's Baby (1968) & The X Files (1993 - 2002) if that's something you could imagine. A fair amount of the time is spent on the paranoia that Sherry & Craig feel about the baby & pregnancy which is alright but we, the audience that is, already know that Sherry is carrying an alien baby because the film has made that pretty clear from the word go so all the ordinary explanations offered up by other character's are a bit pointless & feel like a cheap way to pad the film out a bit as it's never in doubt. Luckily there are some nicely twisted scenes here, a dream sequence as Sherry drops her placenta & the alien baby emerges from it & a cool scene that looks like it belongs in a Japanese Hentai like La Blue Girl (1992) or Legend of the Overfiend (1989) where she is impregnated by a slimy alien. It moves along at a nice pace, it doesn't outstay it's welcome clocking in at about 90 minutes & is something a little bit different in the horror genre which isn't really known for it's originality. I have to mention the ending too which I liked as new dad Craig is beamed aboard the alien spacecraft & is seen holding a mutant freak half human half alien baby in a quite unsettling & amusingly downbeat final scene. Overall I liked Progeny although it's probably not a film for everyone given the subject matter & a few suitably yucky gross out scenes of gore.
Director Yuzna knows how to turn in a decent horror flick & Progeny is no exception, it looks nice enough with his usual trademark gore. The aliens themselves look alright if a little silly & seem to be a mixture of animatronic on set puppets & CGI computer effects which work together well enough & I particularly like their Octopus like tentacle arms. I wouldn't say it's scary but the storyline is in suitably bad taste & outrageous enough to be memorable. Gore wise what's here is effective, there's a shot of an alien bursting through someones stomach while someones stomach is sliced open exposing all their guts & insides. The special effects are pretty good & there's a fair amount of blood splashed around along with a fair amount of female full frontal nudity if that's your thing.
With a supposed budget of about $2,500,000 this had a decent budget & it show's with some nice aliens & special effects as already mentioned, it's well made with a pretty good cast who all do fine.
Progeny is a film I didn't expect to like that much but Yuzna kept things moving & some of his trademark gore scenes make Progeny a reasonable way to pass 90 odd minutes, it ain't no masterpiece but to be honest it doesn't try to be. A good solid entertaining horror sci-fi with an agreeably nasty edge, I liked it.