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Parasite Eve

Parasite Eve

List Price: $19.98
Your Price: $17.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Somewhat Displeasing
Review: I was very excited, as the other reviewers, to get this movie. However, it left a dry taste in my mouth. The movie is slow paced and confusing, but you don't need to have played the game to understand.
Mitochondria, an organizsm within the center of human cells, has its own DNA. These organisms, which provide our cells with power, have decided it's time to rise up and take their place at the top of the foodchain. The plot is the same for the game, only fills in the backstory and history of what happened in Japan. (The game takes place in New York.)
It's not a bad movie, but it's not a very good one, either.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: a forewarning
Review: It is subtitled, so if you are one of those people who like to read the movie, you will enjoy. However, for people who like to watch the movie, like myself, i would not have gotten it had I known.........

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Simply touching...a romantic piece...
Review: Now some people may say this movie is confusing...but thats why you have to pay attention to the movie. This is a movie you should really pay attention to and should probably know a little game knowledge...but not much is needed. All i have to say is that this movie has really touched me... Its a genius romantic piece. The main theme of the movie is love, and i say, if you are a fan of parasite eve, a fan of romantic/drama/sad storylines, a sci-fi fan, a fan of asian cinema, or jus at least interested in the movie, i reccommend you buy it. It's a touching movie. This has to be a favorite of mine and has even got me to buy the games, just to continue the storyline of the "little girl" Mariko Brea's daughter, Aya Brea, and her story many years after what has happened in the movie. So all in all this is a great movie that id reccommend seeing for anyone who is interested.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: awesome dvd
Review: ok this movie is worth buying, great storyline, decent special effects, if you tired of watching the same ole horrow movies and want to watch something diffent then this will not dissapoint. BUY IT <g>

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: On the Eve of Mediocrity
Review: Parasite Eve (at least in its US release) is one of those direct-to-home movies that only bank off the success and popularity of the series it is slightly based on. That aside however... it's still a pretty bad movie (as well as DVD package).

Firstly, the film itself. I'm no aficionado on Japansese Cinema so I can't name who's who but I'll try my hand on a synopsis:
A professor's wife dies in a car accident. However, even after death, he refuses to let her go.(Now my memory gets hazy but) after tweaking with her [special] mitochondria, she is revived but has become a reincarnation of Eve, of whom the film is named after. Eve is the woman from the Old Testament and is the first traceable instance of Mitochondria co-existing with humans. Eve is angry and 1) has the cliche 'super offspring' with the professor as well as 2) has the ability to immolate (read: to cause to burst into flames) people by using the mitochondria that dwell within them. So the professor (naturally) realizes he shouldn't have played God and decides to stop her.

Blah. The acting is ok but don't expect some "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" expressiveness. The music is moving but nonetheless forgettable. The story is interesting to say the least but the ending is way too sweet and happy (in its own peculiar way) for my taste. Overall the movie is (surprise!) direct-to-video fare.

Now onto the DVD itself. ... Now to be more precise...
The main menu itself is just the cover shot of the film. No animations in the background. Just dull. BOO.
Dubbing is unavailable for those who hate reading subtitles (great for people like me, who often times find that dubbing just butchers the movie, or makes it worse than it already is). However, unfortunately, for those who understand Japanese and somehow want to experience the film again without subtitles, the DVD has hard subtitles. This means they can't be removed.

This movie isn't worth [the money] to the casual viewer but if you're a serious collector, it's worth a look.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Confusing, and mediocre at best...
Review: Parasite Eve has been one of my most favorite video games ever since I first purchased it in 1999. For the longest time, I was intrigued with the idea that the game was based on a novel, and I was always curious as to how the two differed from each other, and how the novel stood on its own.
Well, as time went by, I discovered there was a movie made, also based on the novel, that was supposedly more faithful to the novel.
Unfortunately, it was unavailable in the US at the time.
One evening at Gamestop, I was just browsing around, and there, sitting in the middle of the store, was a display case full of Parasite Eve dvds...the movie had made it to our shores!
Well, this wasn't necessarily a wonderful thing.
I immediately purchased the thing and the trip home seemed so long. I finally got the oppertunity to pop the dvd in my player, and the moment was almost surreal for me.
Let me preface this by saying that this soon turned into one of the most disappointing moments in my life.

The film begins, and it is so confusing. We are introduced to characters, then the plot completely switches. We actually watch four plots working at the same time. A man is lecturing about mitochondria, a little girl gets sick at school, a woman is driving and she looks rather distraught, and a doctor has the little girl that got sick at school as a patient, and apparently their relationship goes back a ways, as it appears to the confused viewer that he has messed up more than once when operating on her.
...got that?
Imagine all of this being shoved in your face in the first seven minutes. While it developes an atmosphere of mysteriousness and uncertainty, it is so very confusing and the atmosphere doesn't last long...

When it's all said and done, Parasite Eve is an over-the-top, confusing mess of a film. If you are a die-hard fan of the games, stay with the games. Not one character from the movie is present in the game at all. There are no mutated rats, or even guns...and there is only one scene where an audiance starts bursting into flames, and even that is disappointing compared to the game. If you are a fan of Japanese horror cinema, and you can't live without adding something to your collection, perhaps you might actually enjoy Parasite Eve. But the movie didn't leave me thinking at the end. I never felt for the characters. It just didn't have any soul.
Despite the poor script, the acting is rather excellent. The man who portrays Toshiaki really has the subtle suffering thing down. And Kiyomi is just pure evil. The assistant with the big teeth doesn't take her role very far, but that might have been a good thing.
Joe Hisaishi's beautiful score is another thing going for the film. A haunting love theme is heard a few times throughout the movie in appropriate spots, and is repeated over and over and over again at the very end, but it's a nice song. Some creepy and suspenseful moments are enhanced by this well-composed score. I was disappointed to learn that the soundtrack is only about 28 minutes long, and doesn't even have particular parts of the music from the film in it :(

The picture quality on the DVD is nothing to complain about, in fact, it's better than some of my other DVD's. It's nice and clear, and that's what DVD is all about. The same thing applies to sound quality.
The extras (what extras?!) include a really cool trailer for a movie called "the Hypnotist," and a goofy teaser trailer for Parasite Eve.

The bottom line:
Fans of the game will be ashamed of this film. Fans of Japanese cinema may eat it up. Regular movie-goers won't be entertained, and might even be turned away by the subtitles. It's a love story with horror elements.
My recommendation? Stay away from it. It's not worth your time, no matter how curious you are about it. The games are far superior.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Japanese Suspense
Review: This DVD was not at all what I was expecting. I never knew exactly what Japanese Suspense was like, but after this movie, I do. It is a very good story, but in some parts it is very slow, due to the Japanese Suspense that was put in to it (I guess Japan likes to delay the movie instead of doing something else for suspense).

There are no mutating rats in this movie, but Eve DOES attack a large assembled group of people.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Definitely not a waste, but a minor letdown
Review: This film actually serves as a prequel to the game "Parasite Eve", as the events that occur herein are referenced in the game, and the movie had been released prior to the game. However, whereas Parasite Eve contained a lot of action/thriller elements mixed with horror, the movie is mostly drama with some slight thriller and horror dusted over it.
If you want to see where the Parasite Eve games come from, I'd suggest either a rental or buying a used copy. But if you want something that's actually reminiscent of the games themselves, you'd do better to campaign for them to translate the game novelization that was released in Japan.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Visual movie
Review: This is a good, involving, visual movie made in Japan. The story it came from is the most popular science fiction story in that country. (It was also made into a role-playing videogame that even had a sequel.) Sometimes the DVD can be hard to locate; for instance, Best Buy filed it wrongly under Anime even though it's all live-action. Not many people saw this movie. Surprisingly, it was worth my time. Come to think of it, I would like to alter my vote to 4 stars.

This is a very visual and scientific science fiction involving intelligent, original, and meaningful themes. It is unlike today's superficial actioners that pose as sci-fi. This movie really IS sci-fi, and very moving for the right reasons.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pretty good, even though it was in japanese.
Review: This movie was a great movie! I loved the game series so I figured I'd buy this movie. I must say I WAS disappointed to find that almost NOTHING from the game was in it, but the interesting storyline kept me watching. Yes, it is in Japanese BUT, there are subtitles. I recommend this to all parasite eve and movie fans!


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