Parasite Eve (Parasaitu Ivu) (1997)

The film version of Parasite Eve is sort of obscure while its video game counterpart, which was Square Soft’s 1998 encore production after their greatest commercial hit, “Final Fantasy VII,” is much more recognizable. In some way Square’s reputation as the leading producer of console RPGs had a role in the video game “Parasite Eve”’s success, but also it was also an innovative concept for the company and the genre – taking the interactive horror movie concept of Capcom’s “Resident Evil” series and merging it with Square’s own brand of RPGs with rich storylines and sophisticated characterization. In a classic example of poor planning, the film, which was made a year before the video game, didn’t receive an unofficial States release by ADV Films until 2001, after the video game’s sequel “Parasite Eve II”, a shoddy and unapologetic ripoff of the "Resident Evil" games, was welcomed with lukewarm sales and worse reviews.

Still, fans of the original video game wouldn’t have recognized much in the film: the plots are widely different with the film basing itself on the original novel by Hideaki Sena and the video game presenting itself as a very loose sequel to events in the book. While the game is completely rooted in horror and dark fantasy, the film is a little harder to place genre-wise: ostensibly it’s a horror/sci-fi mix, but it’s also a story of lost, then regained at a cost, love which bases itself off an interesting and little-known-among-laymen fact of human biology. Our Romeo is Toshiaki Nagashima, a biologist specializing in human evolution and mitochondria, who is happily married to a teacher named Kiyomi, but after an accident leaves her braindead, Toshiaki has a breakdown and hordes cell samples from her liver. Unfortunately, he quickly learns that, instead of preserving his wife, he has just helped a very old and very self-aware primordial force realize its plans for removing the human race from existence and replacing it with a new and better model.

Probably the one thing about this film is that, although its premise does reach implausible and even fantastic territory, it is based on a quirk of human biology - the mitochondria's origin as a parasitical bacterium - and that one aspect of the film is well-researched (or, frankly, seems well-researched; I haven't taken a science course since high school). Fortunately, while the film does indulge in explaining the science behind its premise in its early acts, it wisely shifts its focus once the film's events become more unreal to the human tragedy of Toshiaki and Kiyomi. A few of the film's scenes in this regard might seem a little heavy-handed, a little melodramatic, such as Toshiaki coming home to find the meal Kiyomi had prepared for their anniversary, but it's somewhat refreshing, especially to anyone familiar with movies that are passed off as 'sci-fi,'to see such a concern for characterization and find the character development come to a satisfying, if predictable, pay-off in the film's climax. Unfortunately, you might even say the film gives up a bit too much time to Toshiaki and Kiyomi: the plotline between the doctor Sawako and his child patient Mariko doesn't receive much depth, although it's a large part of the film.

Those who expect something akin to the video game or to more recent popular Japanese horror films, such as Ringu, will probably be disappointed. When the 'Parasite Eve' of the title becomes known, she isn't defeated through a test of valor, wits and strength by our protagonists, but through something more subtle. Likewise the special effects, which aren't one of the movie's strengths (there's a scene where a woman is set on fire which calls to mind the opening scene of Exorcist II), the story fortunately doesn't tap into them too much except for one beautiful scene where we first see Toshiaki's 'creation' - a seemingly human woman that moves - and is indeed comprised from - liquid.

Just as it's hard to really place Parasite Eve in a genre, unless Sci-Fi Romance with a Touch of Horror counts as a genre, it's also tricky to really pinpoint its ideal audience. However, I can say for sure that it does deserve its own audience because, video game or no, it stands as a film in its own right.