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.

Author's Note - The Video Game Influence

The concept and the genre of Survival Horror video games was first introduced with the original "Resident Evil", an extremely successful and entertaining franchise based on fighting zombies while running around solving puzzles and collecting enough gear to survive. Similar in gaming mechanics but following a completely different and original story is the "Silent Hill" franchise. Both of these have been turned into effective horror movies for over a decade and are easily the best adaptions of a video game-turned-movie. They have been so effective in fact that both have been featured as the basis of haunted houses at Universal Studios.