Eating Away At My Soul

Perspective.  It can change rapidly.  I was pretty hard on Graystone Park and Wrong Turn 5.  I now think I was very unfair to those movies.  Because after watching them, I sat through Parasitic (Not in the same night).

Parasitic is the tale of a bunch of annoying coworkers who are locked in a nightclub with a co-worker who is turning them into zombies via an alien fish on her chest.

I can overlook the cheap digital effects as a computer generated meteor hurtles towards earth.  But then the film incoherently jumps around.  Shots of large breasted women getting dressed for clubbing.  A guy walking down the street.  Somebody preparing a green slimey fish in the kitchen.  Guy walking into a barely populated club, getting rejected by girls.

The club closes down and one girl eats a bit of sushi.  She gets sick, because apparently she was unaware that sushi is not covered in green slime.  She goes into the bathroom and starts vomiting.  Then she actually takes off her shirt and bra because… she was having trouble breathing?  It is not clear, other than the director felt he needed to make up for something I guess.

A giant worm thing bursts from her neck and she spends the next several hours killing off the annoying cast until she is killed by a guitar.

The film raises all sorts of questions.  Why on earth are these people locked in?  What are their jobs?  Why does the alien fish monster make remote control zombies?  Did they convince the lead monster girl that it would be a really artsy move for them to have her be topless the entire film?

Aside from the opening, the creature effects are pretty solid (which is not that surprising, as the director comes from an effects background).  The picture quality drops as they go into low light areas, as they clearly shot this with a digital video camera.  Lighting is much trickier there and you want to find ways to address it to avoid grainy images.

The acting in the film is…well, amateur at best.  Certainly, the cast is trying, but it is pretty clear the actors have little experience.  Not a crime, of course, but most of the deliveries are stiff.  Sometimes, a film of that nature can enter the so bad it is entertaining category.  This film has just enough competence behind it that the story, character, visual weaknesses all are too glaring to be able to overlooked.