Parasite

I was expecting the lowest of the low, but it turns out that this movie has several things to recomment about it. Its atmosphere is effectively dark, the cast is adequate, it taps on some timely issues, and the creature in this movie is unique. People who like movies like this, hate it when the film makers muck it up, but these people do the genre justice.

Every now and then a buddy of mine and myself sit down with your usual set of junk food and watch a new piece of art from our favourite genre: mutant animal movies. Ahhh, mutant animals (read: bad cgi) hunting down a team of experts (some airheads) through a deserted, dark building (cheap studio sets)! You don't have much expectations with a premise like this. Normally, you'll get some splatter effects, gratuitous nudity and it really doesn't matter if you leave the TV for a minute to make room for more Pepsi. Mutant animal movies are stupid and fun to watch.

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 snake/worm 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 lines/gratuitous nudity/blood), 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 and/or 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. (2/10, just for the fact that it had a mutant worm. Or snake.)

I swear all of the people involved in this movie should only be allowed to work at Burger King. Everyone and everything in this turd is just awful.

Early on, one crew member finds that the untested cleaner to be dangerous. Or something. Then there's another scene of him being told about how a previous team member died. Then they return to the previous scene and he's still holding the document giving a warning but hides it so other team members won't find out. I'm not sure what was supposed to be there instead of the second scene and I'm no quantum physicist but I don't think him existing in two places was intentional since there's only one of him afterwards.

Since this horror movie takes place on an oil mining rig, we're subjected to dialogue about how mining oil is immoral and such. The company manager is a sleazy man who isn't bothered by letting employees die to cover up his experiments.

Boredom and frustration await anyone who watches this movie.

PARASITE is one of those sci-fi/horror combos that shamelessly rips off ALIENS, showcasing that film's enduring popularity some two decades after its release. This one is set in the usual North Sea oil rig locale, with groups of workers and oil-protesting activists being forced to team up when they find themselves stalked by a mysterious creature which has joined them. This one features the usual plucky female heroine alongside a cliched cast of wooden actors, and an enemy which is perhaps wisely kept off screen throughout. It's entirely undistinguished as a thriller, with awful CGI helicopters and explosions; the best moments are directly copied from the ALIEN films, like the vent scenes.