Mimic, an early horror film from director Guillermo del Toro, introduces The Judas Breed, a man-made insect species that evolves in a surprising way. Years before films like Pan's Labyrinth and The Shape of Water would cement del Toro as one of the best filmmakers of his generation, he first attempted to break into the American movie world with Mimic, released in 1997. A sci-fi/horror creature feature, Mimic earned more positive reviews than it did negative, and while it's lower-level for del Toro, it's still pretty good by most standards.
Where Mimic definitely came up short was at the box office, not even earning its $30 million budget back in theaters. Thankfully, Mimic would earn a following on home video, and spawn a small direct to video franchise, with Mimic 2 releasing in 2001 and and Mimic 3: Sentinel hitting shelves in 2003. As one might imagine, del Toro didn't return for those efforts, having moved on to superhero hits like Blade 2 and Hellboy by then.
Lots of del Toro's films include memorable creatures, and Mimic is no different. It featured The Judas Breed, an insect created by scientists to stop the cockroaches spreading a deadly disease around New York City. The Judas Breed succeeded in its programmed quest, but instead of dying out afterward as its makers planned, the species not only survived, but began a metamorphosis into something terrifying.
Mimic's Judas Breed Origin & Powers
The Judas Breed were created by Mimic protagonist Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino), at the behest of the CDC. New York City was being ravaged by an illness called Strickler's disease, and the Judas Breed were genetically engineered to seek out and release an enzyme that killed the roaches spreading Strickler's. The species was designed in a way that would cause it to die off not long after accomplishing its goal, but the six-legged creatures ended up evolving into much larger, more intelligent beings, eventually reaching a size equivalent to human beings.
The Judas Breed had developed the ability to mimic its prey to a scary degree, able to take a human-like form in order to travel among people on the surface, although at night to make it harder to notice that something wasn't quite right about their disguise. The human-sized Judas Breed still couldn't speak, and at first had trouble forming a face capable of blending in, that is until they took a page out of Leatherface's book and started to wear faces taken from their human victims. A carnivorous species, the evolved Judas Breed were highly dangerous, seeing people as their food source. It was thought that the monstrous insects were wiped out at the end of Mimic, but as Dr. Ian Malcolm would say, life found a way, and they returned for the aforementioned sequels.