Parasite Eve (1997)

Even the Japanese have issues adapting some popular novels into film, even if the adaption into a video was a smashing success. The movie version of "Parasite Eve" was a complete let down and not nearly what I was expecting. The pacing is terribly slow and fails in it's attempt to make the scenes seem more meaningful and heart felt. The action sequences, when there is any action, are not impressive and full of cheap special effects, especially the poorly done "people on fire" effect. The background music is too grandiose for such mild action and the script stumbles around before deciding to ever move forward and the final 15 minutes of the film are the hardest to get through.


Hiroshi Mikami ("Premonition") stars as Dr. Toshiaki Nagashima,  a microbiologist expert on Mitochondria, a type of symbiotic parasite of human DNA cells. Toshiaki's wife, Kiyomi, carries an intelligent Mitichondria known as Eve, and Eve is ready to take her evolution to the next level. She causes Kiyomi to crash her car in near fatal accident. Eve then influences the people around her to ensure that Kiyomi's kidneys are transplanted to a suitable host for Eve's child that she procreates with an unsuspecting Toshiaki. This of course happens after Toshiaki takes Kiyomi's liver and makes cultures form it, in which Eve is allowed to grow and evolve at an astounding rate. When Toskiaki realizes what Eve is and what she plans to do, only he can save the human race by trying to reach the real Kiyomi that is still deep inside Eve.

Retribution (2006)

"Retribution" is a truly unique ghost story, at least when compared to the typical American/British kinds. In this detective story, an older detective is starting to believe that he is a suspect in a series of murders that he's investigating. A missing button is found at the crime scene, the kind that matches his coat, and his finger prints are sound on one of the murder victims. He also begins to see glimpses of a woman in a bright red dress. As the story progresses, more people are killed in the same fashion, by being drowned in salt water, by their loved ones over minor offenses. A father kills his son because the son owes a classmate $4500 and a wife kills her young husband because he was sexually aggressive with her when she wasn't in the mood. The detective soon learns that the first victim was killed by her boyfriend when she broke up with him. Cleared of any suspicion himself, the detective is still haunted by the ghost in red. The one clue connecting all of the killers, and the detective, is that they all rode a ferry daily fifteen years ago, and passed an old asylum where the girl in red was kept and evetanully died. Because none of them tried to help her, she is now causing them to kill. Will the detective solve the ghostly riddle before he kills someone hie loves or is he already too late?