Customer Reviews

Parasite

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I dont see too much originality here, seems the story is borrowed
from multiple of other movies.
1. Boring script
2. Very Boring actors/actresses
3. Creature looks good, but its always in the dark and too many
quick shots, could have been lot better.
4. Too much crawling around air ducts...what a waste of film.
I cant even recommend this one for a viewing....maybe after a keg
of beer it might look good.

An oil company has run afoul of a environmentalist group. They step up testing on a new agent for cleaning decommissioned oil rigs and facilities. But due to some mix up, too much cleaner is used and a nasty bit of wildlife mutates into a fast-breeding killer.

This is really bad and completely lacking in continuity. The crack cleaning team includes a drunk and a worker who sleeps too much. After the boss yells at the drunk for lack of professionalism, the boss falls asleep in the radio room. An entire oil rig is to be cleaned with sprayers and about five gallons of cleaner. The team includes a new guy but they have been all working together. There are an awful lot of working lights whenever there is no power. The dial on the main generator says it puts out 25 volts. For no reason at all the drunk climbs into an air shaft to get a drink. Once it is known that the creatures move through the ducts, people decide to take refuge in them. One guy is afraid they won't make it off the rig and hides, he has the keys to get off but no one tells him this. The environmentalists arrived on an outboard raft but there is no way off the rig (where did the raft go?). There is reference to another rig with similar trouble but it would not have had the cleaner. One character calls them parasites but they exhibit no parasitic behavior. Terrorist spend a lot of time downloading a laptop that is not connected to anything (why didn't they just take it?). The gratuitous nude scene involves a woman taking a shower with a man she hates. And on and on and on.

The effects are terrible. The creatures look like flat computer game monsters most of the time. We don't know what they are or where they came from. The acting is really bad and the sets look nothing like an oil rig (probably a studio boiler room). The rig is made up entirely of flammable materials except where it crumbles like wet sand. I can really see no reason for this film to exist or to be watched.

PARASITE is one of those CGI effects laden movies that doesn't really meet our standards. However, for some schlock thrills and some bad acting, it manages to be one of those okay "B" movies.
The monsters themselves look like slugs with teeth, and most of the time, one can tell they're not anywhere near real. The claustrophobic oil rig setting helps with atmosphere and there are some intense scenes. The acting on the whole is barely adequate, no one in particular standing out. The direction is pedestrian, but Andrew Prendergast keeps the action moving well, after a sluggish (no pun intended) start.
Not bad, but I'd rent and not buy.

"Parasite" is a movie that proves the British can make a movie every bit as bad as any other country. This film is a veritable grab bag of terrible acting, ridiculous plotpoints, horrid CGI, the evils of capitalism, and mind-boggling continuity errors. It starts out with a self-important group of environmentalist eco-warriors breaking and entering (for justice against the evil big oil companies, of course) with a sequence that oozes pretentiousness (much of the film aspires to this, but of course being so bad, really doesn't bolster the environmental lobby.) The "Alliance for Green Protection" headed by outlaw Mickey (unappealingly scruffy Conrad Whitaker) is about to expose an oil company for an amorphously evil project, forcing evil oil company tycoon Richard Reiser (Nick Rawlinson) to accelerate the testing of a revolutionary cleaning solution by several months. (Ponder.) Unsurprisingly Reiser names chief scientist and token oil company hottie Dr. Christine Hansen (Saskia Gould) to test the enzymatic cleaner on an abandoned North Sea oil rig the next day. She protests that it isn't ready for testing, etc., but Reiser insists.

Since Hansen is in charge you would think she would lead the project, but Reiser sends a squad of the most utterly dysfunctional roughnecks out to the platform under the leadership of Officer in Charge Jacob (G.W. Stevens) a cowardly idiot with no sense of humor and a scarring past involving a plane crash that killed his wife (although that plot diversion wasted lots of screen time, it was never revealed how it was in any way relevant to the story.) These buffoons spend most of their time on the rig playing with kid's toys (you just know that this will be a moronic plot device later in the film, and I'm afraid to reveal that you are correct,) messing about on the computer, and showering, but also have plenty of time to work on a wonky generator, inspiring great dialogue like "I need to reach the inlet valve." They also have time to get the top-secret stuff that has very specific instructions for its use, and numerous biohazard warnings and disclaimers about how it poses a genetic risk, and spray it with hoses all over the inside of the rig. The directions? They went unread. Of course.

When Dr. Hansen shows up she is mortified at the misuse of her chemicals, but now they are all stuck on the rig because the weather is so bad that helicopters can't land. (This is all shown with bad CGI of an oil rig with waves around it.) As violent as the weather is, and as far from land as the rig is, the eco-terrorists manage to take a rubber raft to it and capture the oil company workers without difficulty. (Surely this will lead to justice!) Mickey has a lot of ponderous dialogue, and it's quickly revealed that his ex-girlfriend is...no points for guessing this one...Hansen. Oh, please. She explains lamely that she is now battling the system from within, but Mickey will have none of it. Very soon ludicrous CGI caterpillars start eating the crew (no points for guessing who will be left at the end) and after a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, everyone bands together except for the ostensible OIC Jacob, the only one with keys to the rig, who hides. (Ponder.) There's a lot of footage reminiscent of "The Blair Witch Project" from the vantage point of the eco-warriors, and some reflux-inducing dialogue like "welcome to the food chain" delivered ominously. The worst dialogue in the film is this exchange between Hansen and Mickey: "Last minute words of advice?"..."Yeah. Don't die." I couldn't make that up.

The group collectively decides to abandon the rig, but, oh yeah, they need to get to the escape pods on the other side of it. (What happened to their raft?) Since they don't have the keys and Jacob is pointlessly antisocial, there is much ado about starting a second generator, and getting electrical power to the escape pods, which require enormous amounts of electricity to run (what the cast actually needed was an electrician, obviously.) The power goes out every couple of minutes inspiring flicker vertigo more than anything, although it was presumably meant to instill fear and apprehension. There's heroism and self sacrifice (especially in the unique electrical worm ignition escape sequence) and a predictable and hilarious moment when Hansen rips her t-shirt into a scanty halter top to use the cloth for a Molotov cocktail to immolate the CGI menace, which she has revealed to be giant bacteriophages thus providing minor titillation to the teenage boys and the biochemists in the audience in equal measure.

I was amused by the premise that vast electrical distribution grids were necessary to power "escape pods" from a central control room far from the pods themselves on an oil rig. (As if it needs to be said, this is completely unlike reality.) I was equally amused by how much light there was and how many computer things worked inside the rig with allegedly no power available. I was less amused by the romantic rendezvous the escape pod ride enabled for Mickey and Christine, though you can't say you didn't see it coming. As a grand finale you know Reiser will get his comeuppance, and he does so at the hands of The Alliance for Green Protection, courtesy of the new dynamic duo of eco-terrorists, Mickey and Christine. I'm sure you are as surprised as I was.

This unmitigated mess of a disaster film was filmed in England in 2003 mostly in Oxford, with a lot of location work done at "G" Site Boiler House, MOD UK, Bicester (how's that for a grand location?) and oddly at the Army Air Corps Museum, Middlewallop. The locations actually provide a reasonably suitable background for the action; unfortunately none of the action is worth seeing. "Parasite" is an utterly boring and relentlessly bad motion picture that is nigh-impossible to enjoy even if you have a more powerful knack than most people do for suspension of disbelief. Diehard fans of Z-grade horror films might find a few inappropriate laughs here or there, but the film takes itself way too seriously for any kind of widespread adulation by B-movie fans.

With material like this to work with nobody from Director Andrew Prendergast to Clapper/Loader Ossian Bacon could save this tawdry nonsense from the rubbish bin of terrible movies. My advice? Let it rest in peace. Or better yet, in pieces.

I got a few free brand-new DVDs from a fellow who rented a storage unit in the same complex where I rented my unit (it was probably way back in '04), and Parasite was one of them.
One of the free DVDs, Teknolust, I looked at right away, but I didn't look at either one of the two remaining DVDs until a few nights ago, which is when I saw Parasite. (I still haven't looked at the third DVD, Nightwaves, but I'll look at it one of these days and perhaps let you know what I think.)
Everybody thinks Parasite is such a bad movie, but I liked it, but for my own reasons. The main actress, Saskia Gould, reminds me of a stripper I was in love with. She not only looks like her, but she acts and talks amazingly like her. Saskia Gould carries the whole movie, and she looks great in a skimpy top and jeans, which is what she wears during most of the movie.
There's another beautiful babe in the movie, and she goes around in a skimpy top and jeans, too. She shows what a good sport she is by showering with the guys, for the oil rig doesn't have seperate boys and girls shower facilities. This other chick has the misfortune of
having one of the parasite thingies catch up to her and eat her. We last see her laying on her back on the floor, and the thingie is eating her from the waist down, but is she still alive? The camera shows her looking up at the ceiling, and then her head slowly turns to look at the camera.
I won't get bogged down in telling all the details of the movie-- you can get that from other people, but if you find yourself with some free time, you might check out Parasite, and check out Saskia Gould. You could do worse.