At the home of his grandparents (Dennis O'Connor and Jennifer Higgin), when his duvet begins to smoulder, he gets into a drawn bath to sleep.

Now 24, unemployed minor-league baseball player Mike Hillary (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) still sleeps in a drawn bath.

After reading a short note from an old friend of his mother's, which says, "I believe you", he drives to her hometown to meet town sheriff Jimmy Masterson (David Nerman), who suggests considering the athletic counsellor job at the community centre.

Mike seems to give the boy an emotional boost, to the delight of instructor Jessica Randall (Ingrid Kavelaars).

They are accosted by her bully of an ex-boyfriend Blaine (Mark Lutz) and a fight ensues, Mike manifesting super strength and an unfocussed power of remote or tactile spontaneous combustion; objects ignite and Blaine suffers burns to his chest from Mike's pyrokinetic touch.

During a baseball game at the community centre, Mike has a vision of James being hurt and bullied by another boy, Bart (Kevin Zegers).

Meanwhile, on two successive nights, two powerful-looking men emerge from a lake — aliens in human camouflage biosuits - the bounty hunter Eleven (Doug O'Keeffe [de]), and Sixty-six (Andrew Jackson).

Mike arrives, calling for her, and sees her helpless in the pool and jumps in, only to be ambushed by Eleven, who tries to drown him.

[5] Though the story's action is mostly set in the fictional American town of Eastfield, principal photography took place in Toronto, 2–23 October 1995.

Besides the incidental music provided by the Electronic Dream Factory, the song that plays during the opening and end credits is Lawrence Gowan's "Holding This Rage", the final track on his 1990 studio album Lost Brotherhood.

[13] TV Guide's critic describes Specimen as "an adequate sci-fi thriller with a serviceable plot," and a "model of low-budget film production," which makes "good use" of its small-town locations, "doesn't ask its cast to do more than they are capable of," and moves "at a sure clip.

One can't fault the producers of this film for taking advantage of a story with which the public seems to have an endless fascination, though one could have hoped they might do something more interesting with it.

However, he also finds the television movie "charming and entertaining" with "some decent performances,"[4] adding that in spite of its flaws, Specimen is a "fine form of guilty pleasure that works around the low budget and hammy acting and taps in to the epic angle that it projects on to the audience.