Parasite |
  • UK • 2004 • 93m •   • Directed by: Andrew Prendergast. • Starring: Gary Condes, Saskia Gould, Conrad Whitaker, G.W. Stevens, Margaret Thompson, Oliver Price, Michelle Acuna, Luke Spencer, Nicholas Rawlinson, S. Khan, Murray Saffron, Richard Beardsley, Cathi Fredricks. • Music by: Tom Bible.     An abandoned oil rig in the middle of the North Sea. Dr.Christine Hansen is charged with the task of testing an experimental cleaning fluid which could revolutionize the oil industry. Hired to carry out the tests is Jacob Rasmussen and his rough and ready crew of deconstruction engineers. But within hours one of them is missing under suspicious circumstances. Things go from bad to worse when environmental activist Mickey Hennessey and his hard-bitten associates seize control of the rig, taking everybody on board hostage. But very soon oil workers and environmentalists will be compelled to join forces in an evolutionary battle for survival. For a savage new life-form has made its home on the rig. And it is hungry.
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Review:
Parasite is not.
The film is about a deserted (of course) oil rig, that is supposed to be cleaned before sinking via a newly developed, uh... fog or something. Things go wrong, because the experts are a bunch of idiots. They simply IGNORE an official letter from their boss they find, where the exact mixing proportions for the cleaning substance are noted, next to a big, fat, biohazard sign. They find the letter, they read it, and then put it away. Now, this IS stupid, and it has just begun. That biohazard stuff infects a worm or snake or whatever (couldn't tell due to bad cgi), which of course gets quiet big and start killing people, not only the team but also a bunch of environment protecting terrorists, who have no function in the story other than being snakeworm food.
So far, so good (and I really don't care that it's cheap and stupid), but this movie is just lame. After the first five minutes of shaky DV camcorder footage, nothing, absolutely nothing happens for at least half an hour (and not much more afterward). It's all dialog that won't add to the story or the atmosphere or the characters or whatever. For a low budget film like Parasite, this is fatal, because without an evolving story that drags your attention (or at least some funny linesgratuitous nudityblood), the film gives you time to recognize its countless other flaws.
Either the director had some ingenious plan that didn't work out in the editing room, or he just didn't care. They use close ups nearly all the time, leaving you confused of where everybody is and what the heck they're doing there. Almost as to compensate this, there are some exterior shots (cgi) edited into the movie every now and then, without system, obviously just to remember us of the fact that this takes place on an oil rig (frankly, you couldn't tell from the sets, which look much like my grandma's cellar).
As I mentioned before, I really don't care if a monster movie's premise is stupid or if there are no production values but I'm getting really annoyed if it isn't even mildly entertaining. For something entertaining you have to have a solid screenplay andor a talented director, and Parasite loses at both tables. The film is full of scenes you might have seen in similar movies (so at least it fulfills some genre standards), but here those scenes are indiscriminately thrown into a mixer. The outcome is chaotic. Nothing you'll ever see has a dramatic function, no actions our "heroes" take make any sense at all, because there is no story. The whole film is nothing but a plot hole bigger than my butt.
Put all those flaws together and you get 96 minutes of confusing nonsense that is practically unwatchable. We were neither drunk nor stoned nor tired and, as far as I can tell, we are not stupid, but from some point at about the middle of the film we simply did not understand what was going on anymore.
Worst Creature Feature in years. (210, just for the fact that it had a mutant worm.
Review by Lari-Fari from the Internet Movie Database.
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