Evolution [2001 film]
Entry updated 13 July 2026. Tagged: Film.
US film (2001). Montecito Picture Company. Directed by Ivan Reitman. Written by David Diamond, Don Jacoby, and David Weissman, based on a story by Jacoby. Cast includes Dan Ackroyd, John Cho, David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, Ted Levine, Julianne Moore, and Seann William Scott. 101 minutes; colour.
A future firefighter, Wayne Grey (Scott), observes a Meteor landing in Arizona, and it is soon found and examined by college professors Ira Kane (Duchovny) and Harry Block (Jones). They observe that the meteor contains a number of Alien microorganisms that quickly mutate into larger and more advanced creatures, apparently replicating the process of Evolution in a matter of days, not millennia. The military takes over the site, but Kane, Block, and Scientist Allison Reed (Moore) are briefly allowed to continue studying the phenomenon with the support of Brigadier General Woodman (Levine) before they are removed. Soon, as the new aliens start assaulting people, the military proposes to use napalm against them, though Kane warns that this will only accelerate their evolution; the result of the attack is that the aliens merge to form a huge, threatening single-cell organism. But Kane figures out that selenium will kill the alien, so he and his allies employ the selenium in Head and Shoulders shampoo to eliminate the menace.
This film flounders in part because of a basic flaw in its design – the attempt to make a light-hearted comedy about an alien infestation that endangers all life on Earth, a scenario more appropriately taken seriously in such films as The Andromeda Strain (1971). There is also a logical problem: as the aliens continue evolving to the stage of primates, the expected conclusion would be the emergence of intelligent alien humanoids who would politely apologize for all the havoc caused by their predecessors and promise to clean up all the damage. But that would not provide the spectacular conclusion that the filmmakers desired, leading to the senseless merger of the aliens into a huge, dangerous monstrosity. The film was deservedly a box-office failure, though it did spawn a short-lived animated series, Alienators: Evolution Continues (2001-2002). [GW]
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