Early on, one crew member finds that the untested cleaner to be dangerous. Or something. Then there's another scene of him being told about how a previous team member died. Then they return to the previous scene and he's still holding the document giving a warning but hides it so other team members won't find out. I'm not sure what was supposed to be there instead of the second scene and I'm no quantum physicist but I don't think him existing in two places was intentional since there's only one of him afterwards.Since this horror movie takes place on an oil mining rig, we're subjected to dialogue about how mining oil is immoral and such. The company manager is a sleazy man who isn't bothered by letting employees die to cover up his experiments.Boredom and frustration await anyone who watches this movie.

Parasite is set in the North Sea where the decommissioned Johnny Alpha Oil Rig is about to be sunk, the company behind the rig Carmine Oil wants to test out a new cleaning enzyme which is supposed to dissolve oil & make it clean & safe to sink into the Ocean. A four man clean-up crew is sent in by helicopter, Jacob (G.W. Stevens), Nils (Gary Condes), Gary (Luka Spencer) & Kim (Margaret Thompson) get to work straight away & start spraying the rig with the highly experimental enzyme. Then the enzyme's creator Dr. Christine Hansen (Saskia Gould) turns up to oversee the cleaning & generally take notes. Unfortunately the enzyme has the unwanted side-effect of genetically mutating living organisms & as such a small parasitic worm like creature has grown to huge proportions & using the dark corridors & air vents lies in wait picking the crew off one-by-one...This British production was co-written, co-produced & directed by Andrew Prendergast & is a reasonable if very generic by-the-numbers 'Creature Feature'. I would probably say that Parasite is maybe just about above the usual Sci-Fi Channel made stuff standard but that's hardly any sort of recommendation. The script by Prendergast, Alan Coulson & Paul Mackman really is very generic & unoriginal as it uses all the 'Creature Feature' clichés & plot stand by's. There's the isolated location. There's the small group of humans who are trapped there. There's the usual mix of scientists & everyday people. There's the friction between several of them for varying reasons. There is some sort of animal or creature that is created due to genetic experiments gone wrong. There are lots of scenes of various character's wandering around dark corridors & air vents. That's about it, that's about all there is to Parasite. There's no attempt at trying to highlight a relevant issue, despite being set on an oil rig about to be sunk & the environmental implications that has nothing is made of it & even the revolutionary cleaning enzyme doesn't come to much. The character's are alright if a little dull, the dialogue is alright too but at over 90 odd minutes in length Parasite really drags at times with far too many scenes of people walking around near pitch black corridors or air vents & it gets very annoying.Director Prendergast does alright actually, Parasite is better made than most of the Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' stuff with good sets & some nice moody lighting although there are times when it is too dark. The CGI computer effects are a mixed bag, the actually giant monster which looks like a cross between a giant snake, a worm & a slug looks pretty good actually & is wisely kept in the shadows for the majority of the film but the other CGI is poor especially the helicopter shots at the start which look terrible. There's not much gore here which is a shame, someone has their head bitten off, there's a dead body with it's stomach ripped open & a few scenes of mutilated bodies with blood & guts splattered everywhere & bloody bones lying around. Parasite has the unwanted distinction of having the worst most unrealistic countdown in cinematic history. The last two surviving character's find out that the oil rig has escape pods but they need to activate the rigs power to launch them & once they get the power working the pods have a countdown before they are launched. At one point we see a computer screen which says there are 12 seconds left yet the woman is half way across the rig & over five minutes of actual screen time elapses including fighting & killing the monster, opening stuck doors, avoiding explosions & helping her injured friend before she gets to the pod which says there's still 3 seconds left!Technically the film is quite good, it has decent enough production values & is reasonably well made with tight claustrophobic sets & some nicely lit photography even if it is a little dark at times. Apparently shot in Oxfordshire here in England. The acting is alright from no-one I have ever seen before.Parasite is an utterly routine, predictable & generic 'Creature Feature' of the sort the Sci-Fi Channel churns out by the bucket load. Probably slightly better than usual but that's no great recommendation. Not to be confused with the much more well known Demi Moore horror flick Parasite (1982).

Every now and then a buddy of mine and myself sit down with your usual set of junk food and watch a new piece of art from our favourite genre: mutant animal movies. Ahhh, mutant animals (read: bad cgi) hunting down a team of experts (some airheads) through a deserted, dark building (cheap studio sets)! You don't have much expectations with a premise like this. Normally, you'll get some splatter effects, gratuitous nudity and it really doesn't matter if you leave the TV for a minute to make room for more Pepsi. Mutant animal movies are stupid and fun to watch.Parasite is not.The film is about a deserted (of course) oil rig, that is supposed to be cleaned before sinking via a newly developed, uh... fog or something. Things go wrong, because the experts are a bunch of idiots. They simply IGNORE an official letter from their boss they find, where the exact mixing proportions for the cleaning substance are noted, next to a big, fat, biohazard – sign. They find the letter, they read it, and then put it away. Now, this IS stupid, and it has just begun. That biohazard stuff infects a worm or snake or whatever (couldn't tell due to bad cgi), which of course gets quiet big and start killing people, not only the team but also a bunch of environment protecting terrorists, who have no function in the story other than being snake/worm food.So far, so good (and I really don't care that it's cheap and stupid), but this movie is just lame. After the first five minutes of shaky DV camcorder footage, nothing, absolutely nothing happens for at least half an hour (and not much more afterward). It's all dialog that won't add to the story or the atmosphere or the characters or whatever. For a low budget film like Parasite, this is fatal, because without an evolving story that drags your attention (or at least some funny lines/gratuitous nudity/blood), the film gives you time to recognize its countless other flaws.Either the director had some ingenious plan that didn't work out in the editing room, or he just didn't care. They use close ups nearly all the time, leaving you confused of where everybody is and what the heck they're doing there. Almost as to compensate this, there are some exterior shots (cgi) edited into the movie every now and then, without system, obviously just to remember us of the fact that this takes place on an oil rig (frankly, you couldn't tell from the sets, which look much like my grandma's cellar).As I mentioned before, I really don't care if a monster movie's premise is stupid or if there are no production values – but I'm getting really annoyed if it isn't even mildly entertaining. For something entertaining you have to have a solid screenplay and/or a talented director, and Parasite loses at both tables. The film is full of scenes you might have seen in similar movies (so at least it fulfills some genre standards), but here those scenes are indiscriminately thrown into a mixer. The outcome is chaotic. Nothing you'll ever see has a dramatic function, no actions our "heroes" take make any sense at all, because there is no story. The whole film is nothing but a plot hole bigger than my butt.Put all those flaws together and you get 96 minutes of confusing nonsense that is practically unwatchable. We were neither drunk nor stoned nor tired and, as far as I can tell, we are not stupid, but from some point at about the middle of the film we simply did not understand what was going on anymore.Worst Creature Feature in years. (2/10, just for the fact that it had a mutant worm. Or snake.)

"Parasite" is one of the weaker Sci-Fi channel films.**SPOILERS**A small group of extreme activists break into an oil company's head office and steal incriminating information about the company's future plans. The company enlists Dr. Christine Hansen, (Saskia Gould) to coordinate a team to clean up an abandoned oil rig to test their newest chemical creation before being exposed to the world. The team, including leader Jacob, (G.W. Stevens) engineer Nils, (Gary Condes) and grease monkey Kim (Margaret Thompson) and others, arrive on the oil rig and begin their assignment. When Dr. Hansen arrives on the rig to begin the experiment, the team of activists also arrives to sabotage the affair. Unknowingly, the team accidentally sprays the chemical on a small parasitic worm and mutates it into a larger parasite, attacking one of the cleanup crew. The rig begins to break down in certain areas, making the team get a little antsy. When the cleanup crew is taken hostage by the activists, the parasites follow them and attack the group. Convinced of the threat to them, the two teams' band together to survive the creatures, which are now growing bigger and threatening to envelop the entire rig.The Good News: The beginning of the film isn't the most action-packed, but with most Sci-Fi films, the film heats up in the second half. Once the discovery of the creatures has been revealed, the film kicks it up a notch and becomes a bit more entertaining. Granted, the beginning isn't exactly all that action-packed, so the last half of the film is it's major saving grace. The ending is the best, as the rig explodes in a giant explosion as the survivors try to kill off the last few parasites. With explosions going off in every location and the fire coming in closer, it adds to the suspense of the scene. Even the designs of the parasites are pretty creepy, based on a general worm look but with a few modifications to the head and a minor design change on the body make the creatures look a bit terrifying at first viewing. Their jaw-lined mouths were perfect for scaring the workers on the rig.The Bad News: The beginning of the movie is extremely weird. Shot through night-vision lens, we see a group of men enter a building under the pretenses of a bomb threat. They then steal information about the company's drilling activities and leave the sight, leaving you to wonder what was really going on: is it a heist film, is it an espionage film, why is this classified as a killer creature film? All these questions come in to play in the beginning. Also pretty annoying is the constant whining between the two sets of protagonists. Because they all have similar backgrounds but just play for different sides, we get a lot of bickering about what is morally ethical or not about what the project is doing to the environment. I could care less about this type of film, but I can't stand all the conversations being about the same thing. It gets boring after a while. Even with all these problems, the worst of all is the unbelievably bad CGI used. When a routine shot of a helicopter flying in a storm is done with CGI, you know the film isn't a high budget film. Even worse, the entire exploding oil factory is done in CGI, as the whole affair simply loses any sense of realism or believability. This is a major offense as the high action finale is ruined by the inclusion of something that ruins the movie. Even for those that don't mind CGI, it is so obviously bad and distracting it destroys the mood of the ending.The Final Verdict: Based on the major flaws involved, I can only recommend this to those who love getting drunk and bashing a film to shreds. This is the only way to enjoy this movie. Watching this one sober is like getting castrated and then watching the video minutes later.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Adult Language, and Brief Nudity