It was something else alright...

paul_haakonsen

Alright, well aside from this being a Japanese movie and having a fairly interesting title, then I knew nothing about the movie, nor that it was based on a Manga. But my love for Asian cinema drove me to watch this 2014 movie when I was given the chance in 2019.

I must admit that I can't really claim to be much of a fan of "Parasyte - Part 1" (aka "Kiseijuu"), because I found the movie to have a rather mundane and slow-paced storyline, with director Takashi Yamazaki at the steering wheel and not really doing much of anything impressive.

Story-wise then "Parasyte - Part 1" was mundane, and I must admit that I actually dozed off twice along the process of the prolonged movie. Yeah, the story failed to really captivate me.

So why did I continue to watch it to the very end? Well, for two reasons. The first reason because because I also have "Parasyte - Part 2" lined up, so I manned up and stuck with the ordeal that was the first part of the movie series. But the second and most important reason for why I stuck with it was the special effects. Granted, the creature designs were ludicrous and quite far out there, but the CGI effects were quite dazzling. In fact, I will say that the CGI team made the movie watchable by the special effects alone.

"Parasyte - Part 1" is hardly a major milestone in Japanese cinema, and it was a movie that came without finding its way on my radar, and now that I have seen the first part, I doubt that I will ever be visiting a second time around. The movie just failed to bring much of anything worthwhile to the screen for me.

This was a difficult movie to suffer through, because the storyline was atrocious and it was quite slow paced. Essentially it was the CGI special effects that salvaged the movie for me and the majority of the reason why I am rating "Parasyte - Part 1" a gracious four out of ten stars, whereas without the CGI special effects the movie would have been given a lower rating from me.

A movie such as this might hold a greater appeal if you are a Japanese teenager with a life revolving around reading Mangas.

score 4/10

paul_haakonsen 20 April 2019

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4792176/