Species
One painful transition to adulthood.
- Many of the deaths are brutal, the alien transformations are as disgusting as the ones from Alien, and even the movie's soundtrack
contributes to a creepy atmosphere, while maintaining a sense of innocence and naievete that makes Sil such a relatable (and thus, all the more horrifying) villain.- The Gross Up Closeup of a homeless man's rotted golden teeth as he gets closer to a young Sil. He attempts to rape her, only for Sil to successfully fend him off and tosses him against the boxcar wall with her extraterrestrial strength. When he dies, blood pours out of his ears and mouth and his body is left twisted and broken beyond recognition.
- The first set of nightmares Sil before waking up inside a boxcar shows two large extraterrestrials mating underwater. Followed by a snake hissing and lunging up at the camera.
- Sil has a second set of nightmares of a train in the shape of a skull charging in close behind her as she runs on the train tracks in her hospital gown. Followed by gross close-up images of many earthworms crawling all over.
- Michelle Williams was already showcasing how lost and confused Sil feels, and then does an excellent job at conveying the agony and terror young Sil feels as her body moves forward with its life cycle without her consent or understanding.
- A train conductor searches around for the young Sil and discovers her large alien cocoon inside the bathroom. When the train conductor gets close enough to inspect it, a human/alien hybrid hand suddenly pops out from the cocoon snarling and grabs the woman and kills her. Then a fully grown Sil emerges bloody from her cocoon and stands over the woman's corpse.
- When a woman stops to use a restroom in the club, Sil is heard growling as her hands burst through the walls to rip the woman's spinal cord out of her body and break it in two.
- A man Sil believed at first to be a viable suitor and mate gets hostile and attempts to take her. Being an extraterrestrial, she responds appropriately by giving him a kiss and using her tongue as a deadly appendage weapon to bite through the man's head out the back of his mouth.
- The scripted version would have been even worse. HR Giger designed Sil's barbed tongue with the idea that she could extend it down someone's throat, the barbs would take hold, then she'd retract it, taking their internal organs with! The effect was ultimately too complicated and costly for the production, so they changed it to the easier "tongue bursts out the back of the head" gag, which Giger objected to, feeling it was too close to a chestburster.
- A woman being kidnapped, held bound and tied up, having her finger severed without anesthesia, and left to die in a deadly gas tank and city electric transformer combined car collision. All because she helped Sil.
