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Aberration (1997) More at IMDbPro »

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Highly entertaining little monster flick., 26 October 2004

Author: HumanoidOfFlesh from Chyby, Poland

"Aberration" is often trashed by horror fans,but this film is certainly well-made and fairly entertaining.Pamela Gidley plays a vacationing young girl who comes back to the cabin of her childhood.Unfortunately she begins to hear strange noises throughout the house and her cat is killed.A wandering research scientist working the area meets up with her and they both fight with mutant geckos."Aberration" is clearly not as bad as it's reputed to be.There is a lot of action and plenty of gore,so I wasn't disappointed.The monsters are cheesy looking,but generally they are convincing enough.So if you enjoy watching low-budget horror films,give this one a look.7 out of 10.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Was there a sale at the 99 cents store? These lizards look like they came from there..., 6 February 2006

Author: Theshapeshifter from United States

This movie is about as scary as a Disney movie. With plenty of gore and a weak story line, it is little wonder that it was overlooked by many, but in the end, the cheesiness of the film is what makes it worth watching for many. The effects aren't as good as hoped and the characters are not very believable. The story is that of a pair of people whom (too my knowledge) are stuck in a cabin where there are insidious lizard-like animals which feast on flesh. The monstrous and quite murderous creatures seem to appear as little more than garden-variety newts, but they seem to creep a viewer out in a pinch. The setting is also fairly weak, but it does the trick well for the story. All in all, if you are in the mood for a simple story and moderately simple effects, cast aside "Troy" and watch this.

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
So bad it's funny..., 19 May 1999

Author: Gislef from Iowa City, IA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Aberration starts promisingly enough, with some suspense-building scenes in the woods. Nothing spectacular, and standard POV monster-fare, but at least it's mildly hair-rising.

We're also introduced to Pamela Gidley as the "heroine." I use the term loosely, because besides having some kind of hidden agenda, she's generally obnoxious and nasty and seems to be doing her "Brigitte" character from "The Pretender."

Naturally, this leads to the local zoologist (looking suspiciously like Skippy from "Family Ties") taking a liking to her. They go back to her cabin for reasons I don't recall, and sure enough, mutant lizards come crawling out of the woodwork. They spit like a cobra, have teeth like a piranha, climb on walls like a gekko, grow gills as necessary, and lay Alien-ish eggs for their offspring. They've already killed Gidley's neighbor *gasp* but after his house gets blown up, they come over to her cabin for the heat, warmth, and extra servings of ham.

Some hilariously bad dialogue now ensues ("Why are you scientist guys always so smart?"), Skippy gets blinded by lizard spit (but heals suspiciously fast), and then Gidley's character's boyfriend shows up 60 minutes into the movie. He's played hilariously by Valeri Nikolayev, who seems to think he's wandered into Desperado by mistake and he's doing Banderas. Turns out he's after money Gidley stole. He sneers, threatens, does some two-fisted shooting of the lizards, and eventually gets a hole gnawed through his head.

That leaves it to our protagonists to blow up the house (Skippy sets himself on fire in the process - whoops), fight the lizards that have hidden in the engine block of Uri's car (??), indulge in some gratuitous bloodletting as one of the lizards eats its way into Gidley's leg (?!?), kill off another of the only five characters in the movie at her grocery store, and eventually kill the last lizard. We're left with our characters slowly bleeding to death in a town with an apparent population of three (and 2 of them are dead).

The lizards are the best part of this movie, although why there are heat-seeking lizards in Minnesota (much less ones that mutate) is never explained. The lizards can seemingly adapt to anything (even bullets!) but they never adapt to surviving in a cold climate, and keep coming after our warm-blooded heroes.

It's like the producers decided after the first half hour that they'd go for comedy, so despite some gory effects, most of it is Gidley and Skippy sniping at each other in your standard "hate you/love you" relationship. Nikolayev's appearance late in the movie is inexplicable, and only seems to provide a way to up the body count and explain the heroine's backstory, even though we never cared anyway.

Other fun things to watch for, besides the hokey lizard F/X, is the landscape of "Minnesota" (New Zealand, actually - where's Hercules and Xena when you need them?). Half the time the characters are marching through the woods, half the time the landscape disappears entirely and it looks like they're wandering through the Arctic.

There's a kinda roller-coaster "sweep you along" effect that keeps you going despite the unlikeable characters and goofy plot, so if you've got a spare 1-1/2 hour, plug this one into the VCR or tape it off Cinemax for a few laughs. Pity MST3K is going off the air: this would be perfect for them. On the other hand, a repeat viewing or two and you can probably MSTify it yourself.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Remember, it's a TV Movie, 10 September 2006

Author: Reyak from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I had mixed thoughts about this movie, but remembering that it was a SciFi Channel made for TV movie, the few things I didn't care for can be overlooked.

I love the whole idea behind the lizards. Spontanious molecular regeneration, combined with spontanious evolution made these things quite frightening had I been in the same situation.

There were a few ideas they should have thought of in the basis of these lizards however, like having at least one develop rather large. Normally I wouldn't care, but Marshall did recognize the possibility of a Komodo type lizard right in the beginning,...and Marshall,...they have grown to 13.5 feet, ten was not the largest. Also if they were going to go with the whole evolution thing, taking on traits of all reptiles, as well as amphibians, they could have tried making a few of the creatures warm blooded, so the snow outside would not even be safe.

As far as acting goes, I thought Pamela Gidley was quite good, and made up for poor Simon Bossell, who over played his character very badly. Valeri Nikolayev from The Saint was quite overplayed as well, however, this was forgivable since his character was quite entertaining, playing something of a Russian prince turned wild west gunslinger.

All in all, I was quite amused with this film, and will buy it. No, I didn't find this to be the scariest movie I've ever seen, still, it was quite entertaining. I might even look forward to a sequel, assuming some of the reptiles found a safe haven in Mrs. Miller's car.

By the way, I loved Pamela Gidley's hair.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Silly, but engaging monster nonsense., 21 May 2003

Author: capkronos (capkronos00@hotmail.com) from Ohio, USA

Pink-haired Pamela Gidley steals money from her Russian mobster boyfriend (Valery Nikolaev) and retreats to a small cabin in wintry Northern town. A blizzard traps her and a friendly local guy (Simon Bossell) there and fast-evolving, fanged mutant geckos (!?) attack. Her ex also eventually shows up to make things worse. A silly premise and occasional hokey creature FX detract from this ALIEN-type movie, but it's humorous, well acted, entertaining, action-packed and lots of fun, with plenty of blood and slime for gore fans. A bit better than expected. It was filmed on location in Wellington, New Zealand.

Score: 5 out of 10

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
pamela gidley haha, 20 October 2005

Author: agamemnon3 from United States

pamela gidley shows that she really knows how to take control of mutated reptiles, although she can't do too much with the script. the actors are so forgettable that the creatures should get top billing. on-screen chemistry between gidley and simon bossell is perhaps the worst ever if not for the recent star wars trilogy.

the effects and props are outlandish but there's plenty of them - a guy's head explodes and you've gotta love that, another guy gets eaten by mutant lizards, and there's an absolutely great scene toward the end where gidley almost loses her leg to a hasty operation on (of all places) the counter in the general store. more lizard battles follow, lots of blood, puss, etc. it's a miracle that the characters' lack of anything resembling common sense didn't get them dusted in the first ten minutes.

if you're a fan of gore, crackerjack horror, B-anything, peter jackson's older work, or have a "thing" for pamela gidley, then you'll probably enjoy it. it succeeds where a lot of cheap movies fail, which is to say that while the plot is essentially brainless, it manages to stay consistently fun and entertaining. aberration's biggest drawback may be its 'TV movie' feel but given the subject it doesn't suffer much for it.

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5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Too good to be bad, 22 August 2003

Author: christophaskell from Denton, Tx

It can't be helped, the film is cool. Yeah it's low budget and there's bad acting, etc. but from the beginning this film grabs you. A young girl (Pamela Gidley) escaping her troubled life finds refuge in her families old house in the mountains. She gets stuck in her house, but luckily with a grad student (Simon Bossell) who specializes in animals. Very soon after they get stuck the showdown with the killer geckos begins. All parts with the geckos are entertaining, but by far the best bit is when the girl's boyfriend (Valeri Nikolayev) finds where she's hiding and tries to force 'his' money out of her. Must be seen to be understood, but he does a great job of being campy and unintentionally funny. 'Aberration' did not take itself too seriously, which paid off because the script was really cheesy. I would say it's good enough to rent, definitely worth a watch if it's ever on TV. Rating: 23/40

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7 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Perhaps the worst movie I've seen in the last decade., 22 August 2006

Author: malachiX2000 from United States

Seriously, why is it that every terrible horror film has a review on IMDb with some guy claiming that "it's pretty good?" Apparently you can have the worst movie every made but, as long as you have green things getting squished at some point, it somehow has merrit.

I caught this on the Sci Fi channel and was quite amazed at how bad it was. Badly acted, badly directed, badly written, with some of the worst special effects I've ever seen. Honestly, I was very shocked to find out this was made in 1997 as the special affects and cinematography looks like something from the mid 80s. The script is powerful bad filled with many awkward attempts at humor that just hurt thanks to the terrible dialogue and acting. In fact, its' really amazing HOW bad the script is, filled with plot holes that seem like they were making things up as they went along. For instance, the little lizard things (which rank as some of the most powerfuly un-scary creatures than the puppets in hobgoblins), decide to evolve (as they do often in the movie) and become bullet proof. Yet, immediately after taking several handgun blasts to the fact, the creature is killed by being hit by a wooden chair. Huh? Even odder is several scenes later when bullets suddenly start killing them again. The writing also seems to lack any sort of structure. For instance, at one point in the movie the main character warns that, if not stopped, these creatures could grow to be the size of komodo dragon. Based on a line like that, isn't it logical to assume that this genre flick we'd get to see one of these things the size of Komodo dragon by the end of the movie? Apparently not as the things never get bigger than a cat. The movie really drags as well. Every 10 minutes the characters relax and pronounce that they've exterminated the last of them only to find another batch, and another, and another. When the credits finally role, one can't help but ask, "really? It's over? I'm free?"

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
The "Aberration" is that I couldn't sit through a killer-reptile movie, 29 August 2006

Author: Phillemos from New England, USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The horror movie comes to the table with a promising idea -- a new species of lizard runs amok in a small, snowbound Minnesota town (though, inexplicably, this movie was supposedly filmed in New Zealand). Every time one of the dies, the species develops a cockroach-like immunity to that form of death. Therein lies the problem. They only seem to develop that immunity for one scene, then you can kill them any way you want again. Had they stayed consistent with that immunity theme, this could have been a pretty creative, entertaining horror movie. But the producers seemed instead to opt for the "handful of people trying to avoid being killed by monsters while trapped in a storm" direction for this flick, which has been done to death. I also kept expecting the lizards to grow to Komodo-dragon sizes by movie's end, which never happened and was kind of disappointing. And the scene where Uri bursts in to get his cut of the stolen money was absolutely asinine. You could have left that 20 minutes on the cutting room floor and it probably would have improved the overall content. I give this movie a 3, largely because it could have been a uniquely entertaining horror film but they completely dropped the ball.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Caught it on SciFi - entertaining and not that bad, 25 January 2006

Author: mark_gossett from United States

First of all; the rating scale is difficult to use as I recommend the movie (who doesn't love campy, tongue-in-cheek low budget scifi/horror; if you're reading this you do!). I use the scale for the quality of scenes not the movie whole. The acting was OK and at times rather bad. There were some cool aspects and the gore was quite good even though scifi hacked it. Pamela Gidley i've always loved! The lizards looked like a cross between older godzilla movies with a hint of digital animation at times. I loved the setting (cabin in the woods) and the snow. A hot snow bunny always helps. All in all it's definitely worth a rent.

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