Well, I had hoped for just a little bit more from this movie actually.
"Parasitic" is about some comet that hits Earth that apparently had some kind of space parasite on it (doesn't comets always have some kind of space parasite on it in movies?) and it causes a mutated parasite to fester on Val (played by Bianca Holland) while stuck inside a locked off bar. The parasite grows and takes over the host body, preying on the remaining workers trapped inside the bar.
The storyline was pretty straight forward, though it had a tendency to linger on for long times without really getting anywhere, which tended to slow the movie down dramatically, where you just sat around and wanted it to pick up pace and get going. The storyline didn't bring anything new or innovating to the horror genre, so don't' expect anything revolutionary here.
As for the characters in the movie, well, oh my... The characters were so rigid and stereotypical that it was painful to watch. And they were having some real questionable dialogue that was halting at best. Trapped inside a bar and people disappeared around them, then turning up dead or worse, and no one seemed to take it overly serious, nor were any coming up with any real usable plan or plausible ideas at any times.
And who bars up the windows of a bar, locking up all exits securely from the inside and refuses to let employees out? That whole thing was just so unrealistic and I found it very hard to buy into that approach. But how else would they keep the people trapped in a small, confined space with the deadly space parasite? The one thing that "Parasitic" really had working for it, was the special effects. For a low budget movie, then they have really managed to pull off the effects quite nicely. The parasite was well designed and it looked real actually. I was thoroughly impressed with the effects in "Parasitic".
One question came to mind when I was watching the movie. When one is sick with an upset stomach and vomiting, why would one take off the shirt and then proceed to take off the bra? That just made no sense at all, and it was a really lousy cheap trick to get some nudity into the movie. It was pointless and didn't help the movie along one bit. And this happened quite early in the movie, which pretty much put down a low bar for the expectations for the rest of the movie. Had they opted to not go for this lame approach, there would have been just a tad more believability to the movie.
And why would there be no phones in the bar, aside from one apparently locked away in an office? And in this day and age, why did only one, yes one, person in the bar have a cell phone? And for some odd reason there was no proper lighting anywhere in the bar to be found, everything was shrouded in perpetual gloom and shadow.
"Parasitic" is not particularly scary, though filmed in a relatively small location, they did manage to build up a good enough sense of being trapped and a sense of claustrophobia. Just a shame that the movie didn't manage to pull off any real shocks or scary moments.
What makes it worth to sit through this movie, it is the special effects on the creature, but it is hardly enough to justify spending about an hour and twenty minutes on it. If you like horror movies and want to be scared or thoroughly entertained, I wouldn't particularly recommend that "Parasitic" is the first of choices.
Though I will say that for a low budget movie project then the overall feel of the movie (aside from the lousy characters and dialogue), then they managed to pull it off well enough, so thumbs up for that part at least. And a thumbs up for the creature effects.
