Ben Kingsley’s Fitch, the lead scientist on a top secret experiment, watches from a secure overlook as his lab workers pump cyanide into the containment chamber of a perfectly normal looking girl named Sil, played by a teenage Michelle Williams. Scared, Sil pleads with the scientist who merely mouths the words, “I’m sorry.” When the chamber fills with the deadly gas, she taps into superhuman strength and punches her way out of the lab’s heavy security.

As she attempts to disappear and blend into society, Fitch assembles a ragtag team of specialists to track her down: a freelance hit man (Michael Madsen), a pair of believable scientists (Alfred Molina and Marg Helgenberger), and an empathic government agent (Forest Whitaker) who’s probably my favorite character even though the script doesn’t do enough with his unexplained powers. Wouldn’t it have been great if the plot contrived for the empath and the monster to share a scene? As is, his supernatural abilities are mostly limited to assuring the audience that Sil is scared, which at times makes the hunt feel crueler than fun.

After killing a handsy hobo, the lab-grown girl steals a handful of cash, eats a million calories worth of junk food, and hibernates in a cocoon, metamorphosing into Natasha Henstridge in her very first role. Meanwhile, Fitch brings his team up to speed: some time ago SETI detected an alien signal which delivered an extraterrestrial DNA sequence along with the instructions for combining it with a human embryo. The result was Sil who is now hiding out in LA as she scours the city for an appropriate mate, which will ultimately lead to the end of humanity itself. “We decided to make it female so she would be more docile and controllable,” Fitch explains, to which Madsen responds, “Well, I guess you guys don’t get out much.”

At one point Helgenberger speculates that the aliens sent the DNA sequence as a form of pest control after determining humans would become a nuisance one day. In another scene, she posits that Sil’s psychopathy may be the result of being raised in a sterile environment without a mother figure. These scenes are few and far between, but touch upon slightly bigger ideas than you would expect from a science-action movie. Notably, Species released the year before Independence Day, which features a lot more technical mumbo jumbo even though it features a considerably dumber invasion plot.

Which isn’t to say Species doesn’t experience the frequent lapse of judgment. Early on, the team decides to create another Sil, minus the human DNA, “to see what we’re actually dealing with.” In reality, it’s a flimsy excuse for two of the characters to get trapped in a room with a hideous monster, which sports the worst practical effects in the entire movie. Later, Sil successfully throws the team off her trail, but then sets her sights on Madsen as her baby’s daddy, a plot point that’s forgotten immediately after it serves its purpose. What’s most disappointing is the kill scenes pale to Alien’s, and although Sil’s alien form is satisfyingly unique, the filmmakers give her a xenomorph tongue for penetrating human skulls.

This is my first viewing in thirty years. If you’re anything like me, Species is bigger and better looking than you remember. Out of literally hundreds of Alien knock-offs, it may be the best as it mostly limits itself to emulating the best parts instead of the easily reproducible stuff that B-movie filmmakers had been running into the ground for more than a decade. They even brought H.R. Giger in to add some truly perplexing images, such as a skull-faced nightmare train and extendable nipple-snakes. Even when the plot predictably devolves into flamethrowers and confined mechanical spaces, it’s still a cut above the rest of the clones, if only because it wraps up quickly thereafter. 

Where it really punches above its weight is in the unusually likable cast, which balances the prerequisite technobabble with genuinely fun banter. Sure, you can talk yourself out of liking it if you just prod at the hokier elements (Sil’s motivation to mate, her alternating stupidity and brilliance, the fact that she uses a Jedi mind trick in precisely one scene and never again). Alternatively, I’d recommend accepting it for what it is: a better-than-average science fiction flick that gave the world Natasha Henstridge, who commands the screen as well as her seasoned costars.