Parasite Eve (1997)

I've noticed that many people associate the movie with a series of RPG video games with the same title. In fact you will be very disappointed if you set about watching it with strong conviction that you are about to see some action movie in Resident Evil style.Instead, plot of Parasite Eve base on a very romantic, warm story and intelligent science-fiction elements. In it's roots it tries to answer a main questions: what is the true love and what makes it really true and unique? Before I watched the movie I had thought about how the director will present all that I've read in Hideaki Sena's book. Now, all I can say is that Mr Masayuki Ochiai did really great job. The movie is naturally less detailed but even though some changes in plot has been made it sill maintain this one of a kind (romantic, intelligent) climate of the book. Moreover whole story includes very interesting and true scientific facts about evolution of cells (and humankind).In my opinion "Parasite Eve" is excellent movie with remarkable music of Joe Hisaishi (known mostly from films of Takeshi Kitano and works for Ghibli studio e.g. Totoro and Spirited Away).I would recommend watching this film, first of all, to people who like romantic, maybe a little bit sad stories, which stands at high moral level and are raising audience's spirits. I strongly believe that those who like intelligent s-f stories, based on real scientific ideas will also appreciate and enjoy this movie.

I had stumbled across this film after playing parasite eve 2 (so many years ago). I thoroughly enjoyed the game and thought they should make a movie, thinking that it would be far more interesting than the resident evil movies and so on. That was when I found the film, but deciding that there were no copies to be found in Australia, i gave up the search. I now get US DVD, I got this one thinking I would give it a try.To begin with let me say, do not watch this movie expecting it to be like the square soft versions of the Parasite Eve franchise, this movie can before, and while it has a slower pace than the rest of the installments, I still believe that it works very well.The story begin with a man who is a scientist, and on the eve of he and his wife's anniversary, she falls victim to a horrible car crash, she is pronounced, brain dead. The husband reluctantly agreed to turn off her life support and give her organs away, on the condition that they give her kidney. The organ goes to a young girl (who is apparently the mother of Aya Brea, the central character of the game, though there seems to be some debate amongst fans) and the young girl begin to experience strange occurrences.The film is very deep emotionally compared to most others in the J-horror genre, there are, however, some freaky bits such as Mariko in the hospital. One thing that should be mentioned is the special effects, they are quite good for a Japanese movie made in 1997.One of the downsides to this film is there are moments where the tension simply turns to tedious and while I believe overall the film turned out OK, there is a point, in the hospital where I just tuned out. The final climax however does build up well, leading to the final, very verbal resolution, which I thoroughly enjoyed, it was very well executed. The final scene is very emotional and is a very solid finale.In conclusion this movie is worth seeing, while it is not perfect, it should entertain movie go-ers and fans of parasite eve alike, as it gives them a chances to see the events leading up to the game.

the only reason that i give this movie a 2 rather than a 1 is because it is so amazingly terrible that it carries comedic value along with it. the story is so absurd, and i mean absurd in a bad way, that the very mention of it makes me, and anyone else who knows about it, explode into a pitying laughter for whoever decided to undertake this masterpiece of failure. i mean really, think about it, a person's mitochondria??? rising up in rebellion???? that belongs in a comedy or a comic book, not a serious movie. they took it seriously like there was a scientific possibility that this could happen. that approach may work for something that actually sounds cool, but this strayed away from that possibility the moment the writer put his fingers to the keyboard. again i say that the only purpose that this movie serves is to laugh hysterically at; and i meant that in the worst possibly way

Japan in the last decade has made some pretty challenging horror films that require your constant attention and while I'm the first to admit that this is clearly not one of the best it's still an interesting story that's worthy of being checked out. Story is about a scientist named Toshiaki Nagashima (Hiroshi Mikami) who works with cells and he has a theory that ancient surviving cells called Mitochondria symbiotically live within other cells that inhabit our bodies. Toshiaki's wife Kiyomi (Riona Hazuki) is involved in a traffic accident and declared brain dead by doctors but Toshiaki learns that a young girl named Mariko (Ayako Omura) needs a kidney transplant. Another doctor named Tatsuro Ohno (Goro Inagaki) convinces him to get his wife's kidney but Toshiaki tells him that he wants Kiyomi's liver.*****SPOILER ALERT*****Tatsuro transplants the kidney into Mariko and Toshiaki starts to culture Kiyomi's liver cells in his lab and before you know it the cells in the culture grow into this gelatinous goop that takes the form of Kiyomi. Meanwhile, Mariko is having problems of her own as her uterus is changing and Toshiaki learns that the Mitochondria need Mariko to give birth to a new life form!This film is directed by Masayuki Ochiai who gives the viewer a film that is very visually stimulating and in one shot during an operation the camera is looking up through the incision at the doctor! This story is taken from a novel by Hideaki Sena but it also became a popular video game and some of the events that take place are from the game itself. Ochiai shows patience in the way that he tells this story and at certain points the film does tend to drag with a few scenes that go on a bit long. The story itself I found reminiscent of the films that Hammer Studios use to make in the 1950's and 1960's and I think both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing would be very much at home working with a script like this. The film benefits from two performances and the first is from the radiant Hazuki who is so beautiful that we understand her husbands obsession with trying to keep her alive. But the best performance comes from Mikami who is a very good and respected actor in Japan and it's interesting to watch his character go from bookish doctor to obsessive scientist and then to a state of desperation trying to save the world. This is certainly nowhere near as intriguing as "Audition" but it does play well if your a sci-fi buff which I am so on that merit it's a film that deserves a look.