Welcome to Day 3 of my Random Movie Reviews!
So far, we have reviews two movies: a Filipino romance film (Sana Dati) and an Asian romance flick filmed in Taiwan (Turn Left, Turn Right). Today, we're gonna something different, one which is not a romance but still has a moody and heavy atmosphere as the two other previous movies we just discussed about. This time, we're gonna do a Japanese flick. Not just any flick, we're gonna rip through some horror.
Let's go and travel into the dark recesses of the world of Parasyte.
Based on the popular manga series which eventually gets an anime adaptation and distributed by the same company who made the Godzilla films, Parasyte Part 1 is about an average timid boy named Shinichi Izumi (Shota Sometani), living his boring life with his mother (Kimiko Yo) and his mundane experience of high school with his girlfriend, Satomi Murano (Ai Hashimoto).
It all changed when unknown extraterrestrial beings come to Earth and begin entering the bodies of several human victims through their ears, taking control over them completely. An alien parasite
(Sadao Abe) tries to get Shinichi, but because of his headphones, he is unable to enter his ear. So he takes over his right hand instead. With this, the alien and Shinichi become one being with two different consciousnesses. Finding out about this, the boy named the sentient right hand, Migi, which means "right" in Japanese.
The two form a slightly uneasy friendship with each other with Shinichi still trying to get used to this change. The progress of the movie gets darker as Shinchi learns from Migi that he is an alien originally attempting to control him completely through his ear but failed to do so. He also learns that the aliens have assumed the forms of many humans they invaded. These aliens are like parasites, meaning if the host dies, so does the alien parasite. Also, they eat humans.
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| Gross. |
Shinichi and Migi meet up with three other aliens assuming the human forms of the school superior Ryoko Tamiya, a person who wants humans and her race to peacefully coexist (Eri Fukatsu), Tsuyoshi Hirokawa (Kazuki Kitamura), and a police officer, who refers to be called "A" (Nao Omori). Tamiya is undergoing an experiment involving humans and parasites after she had sexual intercourse with her human form and became pregnant as a result. As the duo learns more about the aliens' origin story from them, A, going against Ryoko's orders, goes to Shinchi to kill him. However, Migi defends his friends and the two aliens put up a rigorous fight against the other until Migi manages to finish off A. Or so they thought.
When Shinichi's mother went out in the night to go shopping, she encounters the mortally-wounded A lying on the ground. Before she could do anything, A slaughters the mother and takes her body as A's new form. Shinichi and Migi goes home and there, he meets his mother, now controlled by A. The boy hesitantly refuses to believe that his mother is dead and now controlled by the same alien parasite he faced earlier. He thinks it's all just a bad joke. But taking it as an advantage, A swiftly impales Shinichi and leaves him and Migi, with his host now dying, to perish on the dust.
But the withering Migi wouldn't allow that, as he gave some of his life energy to Shinchi to nurse him back to life. And it works. Migi's last ditch effort revives the timid boy, but the genetic materials from Migi that fuses with Shinichi's during his resuscitation causes him to change his personality completely and act more like Migi, transforming from a shy, timid boy to a strong, serious person. As the run of the movie progresses, Shinchi's character becomes more dark and uncaring. For example, there is one scene where Shinichi and his girlfriend, Satomi, see a dog lying in the middle of a road. The boy effortlessly walks to the dog in the road without getting by cars and brings it to the girl. After Shinichi concludes that it's dead, he throws it into a trashbin, much to the dismay of Satomi. Shinichi says that it's not a dog anymore but rather a "body of flesh and bones." Harsh. Extremely harsh but true.
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| Poor dog. |
There's also the fact that there are times at random where Migi has to sleep, but unlike humans, parasites like him are impossible to wake up, as if they are dead at the time. So basically, whenever there is an enemy in front Shinichi and Migi is sleepy, he's f***ed. Let's not forget to mention that ever since the mysterious butcher killings, people somehow conclude that it's non-human that did those atrocities and claim that a parasite can be identified by pulling out a strand of hair and reacting by curling itself.
Moving on, to make matters worse, the duo finds out that there is a parasite in charge of an event that would gather as much as possible in one area and swiftly murder them all at once. Next, we see that Hideo Shimada, a parasite in form of a transfer student, (Masahiro Higashide) is now in the same school Shinichi is in. Tamiya and the others already know of Shinichi's massive change because of Migi's influence. Meanwhile in the art room, where Satomi and the girls are present, Shimada is being drawn as a model. But when a girl pulls out a strand of hair from Shimada, it curls and decays, scaring the girls into thinking they might be in the presence of a non-human. Shimada is angry at this and corners the panicking girls after revealing his true form. But before he could attack, Satomi tosses a bottle of chemicals on the enemy and it pours on its head, deforming it completely into a horrendously extremely grotesque figure and triggering him to go berserk.
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| AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!! |
Eventually, the school falls into mayhem as Shimada destroys anything in sight. This catches the attention of Shinchi and Migi, who eventually saves Satomi and battles the monster. In this scene, we are shown the physical changes of Shinchi due to Migi's cells in his body. He can now move a hundred times faster and more agile than a regular human. He can jump from three stories tall and wouldn't feel a thing, as shown when Shinichi carries and saves his girlfriend by jumping off the school building after Tamiya, disappointed at Shimada's impudence, drops a nitroglycerin at the broken parasite. Shinchi's aim and accuracy is also drastically improved. After sensing Hideo is still alive and heading towards the roof of the building, Shinchi goes to a higher building, aims at Shimada with a crowbar and Migi as the bow, and directly shoots at him, ultimately killing the parasite forever.
Soon, the duo encounters A, still in the body of Shinichi's mother. Unfortunately, Migi is going to sleep and A notices them. Before hibernating, Migi materializes into a long and sharp sword for Shinichi to be used in combat against A.
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| Good luck staying like that for a few hours, dude! |
After a difficult battle, Shinichi accepts to kill his own mother to rid the parasite and does so. Finally, at the end of the movie, we see the big boss of the parasites, Goto (Tadanobu Asano), who wants to bring all of humanity into extinction. Meanwhile, inside a hospital room where Satomi is in a coma, Shinichi swears that he will find every parasite he can and kill them all, regardless of who they are and what they are. The movie comes to a close in cliffhanger with a cameraman from a roof taking a picture of Shinichi and Migi through a window, making way for Parasyte: Part 2 that would be released the following year.
Overall, this movie is awesome. I mean not as awesome as Godzilla but still pretty awesome.
Since I never read Hitoshi Iwaaki's manga series, I won't compare this movie to the original. I'm gonna judge this movie as its own thing, similar to what I did last time in Turn Left, Turn Right. The shock violence scenes in Parasyte surprises me a lot, although there are times when they come out flat. For a horror film, there's a lot of blood in there and props to the makers of this grotesque flick for making something this ambitious. Through the course of the movie, we see that it transitions from a slasher horror film to an human-against-alien action film.
The CGI in this movie isn't bad either, at least for today's standards. In fact, it's pretty well down. The way the heads morph into blades and the eyes and Migi look quite realistic.
But this movie's not without flaws. Although Parasyte is unafraid to have characters experience great tragedy, at the same time, the film is very predictable, even for someone who hasn't seen the manga or anime, and though the acting cannot be faulted, the melodrama did take away from some of the experience.
And of course, we have Migi. He looks a lot cuter and better in the manga or anime adaptations. Cute hand-drawn characters don't work when they are rendered the same way in live-action movies. That's not to say Migi doesn't adorable moments. I mean, he does. There are also moments where he comes out as more creepy than cute.
This being said, Parasyte: Part 1 provides the viewer with an original experience, which is as tense as it is entertaining, though lacking information and an anti-climatic finish, may leave question marks bobbing above your head. Since this is just the first part of the whole thing, I'll let it slide a bit. Maybe a lot of problems in this movie would be resolved in Part 2. By the way, it's already out, so maybe I should the following film a watch. I'll also probably be making a Random Movie Review based on Parasyte: Part 2.
Now, to end this review, I bring in the question for today:
If you have a strange being living in your right hand, how will you cope with the change?
Leave your interesting and creative responses in the comment section BELOW, or on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.
But thanks again for reading today's Random Movie Review. I'm the Internet Warrior and I approve this message.
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