Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

jesterification I'm a fan of book to movie releases. Regardless of whether I've read the book or not, I enjoy spotting the differences and considering how well the movie conveys the gist of the plot and how the actors portray the characters. This time round however, I was sorely disappointed.My first contact with the Parasite Eve series was during the Playstation game's release in the 90s. Enthralled by the bioscience driven story, with the chill of the idea that your own body might rebel against you, I began looking up the original novel that started it all. At the time, the book remained untranslated, but I managed to find a graphic novel version translated to Chinese at the local comic shop. The plot, essentially a prequel to the game, completely blew me away. It explained so much of the game's background in a style of brutal science fiction horror.This movie, an adaptation of the novel, abandons most of that. While I can forgive the fact that the special effects aren't exactly 'up to standard' given that it is a film from the 90s, I cannot forgive the utter mangling of the plot and the bad acting. I honestly don't understand how they managed or decided to drag the film out to two hours long while failing to convey even half of the original story.Instead of the evenly paced bioscience thriller where the rush to stop Mitochondria Eve actually *fails* and her scheme is only foiled by a miscalculation on her own part, a frightening salvation of mankind only by a single chromosome; the plot is inexplicably dissolved into a two hour long, woodenly acted angst-fest of a man who forgot his wedding anniversary and greatly regrets not spending time with his wife. The story of the mitochondria rebelling seems to take second place to this, especially in the anti-climatic 'grand finale' where he somehow stops the independently acting Mitochondria from carrying out their plot because for some reason, in the process of making their host fall in love with him, they have come to develop feelings for him too (or imply that 'Kiyomi', his wife, is still 'in there', which is even cheesier and more unbelievable). To top it off, the movie even fails to provide the aftermath of what happens to the other characters, leaving behind plot holes aplenty.All in all, if you really want to something that stays true and keeps to the spirit of Parasite Eve, just order the book off Amazon, they actually have it translated now.

Crystal This film was beautifully laid out, the plot being subtle and uncontrived, the characters acting a bit outlandish at times, but still with a realism that allowed the forward movement of the tale. Overall, I'd recommend this movie to anyone willing to commit a few hours of their time to the intense psychoanalysis of Japanese story telling needed to grasp even a small portion of this film. Needless to say, I'm still clutching my head and crying for my mother.*SPOILERS BELOW* The only thing, in my mind, that detracted from this movie was that the ending scenes (within the kidney patient's hospital) were so unbelievable - even from a SciFi perspective. Why would anything/anyone wait anxiously for 10 billion years for their evolution, only to throw it all away for some weirdo with flaming arms? o_O

RobynBelfry I really enjoyed this film. I'm a BIG fan of the game and it was interesting to see how they blended elements of the original story into the storyline of the SquareSoft title.It is an interesting concept... and perhaps one that could have been explored a little move fully. The ideas that the film presents are original, and displayed in a pretty original way. I chalk most of my "huh?" factor (mostly in relation to character motivation) to the difference in cultures.Some of the effects are pretty groovy, too! It's a little slow moving at first, but it does start to pay off towards the end. Hang in there.And then go and play the game!

Charles Herold (cherold) This is a really odd little movie. I suppose it's a thriller, but the thriller part is just in the middle. The beginning is about obsession and is slow moving but fairly compelling. Over half way through it moves into thriller territory and has some genuine chills. But the ending eschews the usual thriller big finish for something haunting and rather beautiful, making one feel this is more a love story than anything else, but a really strange one. The movie has terrific atmosphere and is really pretty original, and while it is sometimes a bit on the lethargic side I thought it was fascinating.