There was something about that poster for Dark Parasite that made me want to watch it, and indeed, it did not disappoint. I remember as a child I watched my fair share of Italian genre films, be it Jaws knockoffs, Road warrior wannabes, giallos, zombie flicks from nostalgia, or even Alien ripoffs. I remember renting them from local video stores and catching odd films in local theaters. I have to admit, while most Italian exploitation films from glory days are long gone, vile and horrid as they may be now, there are some that I still indulge in. Maybe there’s still another Deep Red, Contamination, or The Beyond out there… Unfortunately, this wasn’t it, it wasn’t even half as good as Alien 2: On Earth.
Dark Parasite, unlike other films of its kind, starts with David White (Dead House, Curse of the Blind Dead) as Jacob, setting the stage by explaining what he wants his team of Mark (Michael Segal, Dead Bride, Out for Vengeance), Abraham (Aaron Steilstra, They Talk, The Price of Death), and Nikita (Désirée Giorgetti, Still Out Of My League, Sky Sharks) to do. The job revolves around a heist, which they happen to carry out, although it’s more of a recovery mission. In simpler terms, they are recovering something expensive that a Russian mobster had used and abused.
Sure enough, it spirals out of control and the three of them are now holed up in a safe house, eagerly waiting for Jacob and the mobster’s lieutenant to collect whatever is in the briefcase and pay them off. Out of the blue, an alien creature comes to life in the tunnels beneath the house, but its intentions do not seem friendly.
Having worked together on Morning Star, Anger of the Dead and a few others, writer/directors Luca Boni and Marco Ristori blend genres in Dark Parasite. The creature makes a first appearance in the form of a meteorite. Slugs that turn into fully grown giants and attack poor homeless people seem to be all the rage nowadays. Or maybe that’s just a different bed bug. Either way, the whole premise is rather confusing. News reports show meteorites falling with a string of unexplained disappearances, but how exactly do they correlate?
That is everything we can spot for the next hour. Dark Parasite is so low budget that there is not much of the monster, or even anything at all, as the shootout is, for the most part, off-screen. In this case, all I can gather is roaming in the dark with Abraham trying to be tough, while Mark looks for ways to extract himself, Nikita, and their unborn child out of this mess. And from a distance, Omari is constantly telling everyone that they are done for.
No one works for close to an hour with the exception of Nikita every now and then being able to set her dead sister’s ghost. Then the alien comes in, the alien itself shows up followed by a flamethrower. Finally, someone is able to grab a flamethrower lying around, allowing us to proceed to what we believe is the last stand.
I’d like to start off by saying that much of this is unfortunately devoid of appeal. Everyone in the cast is dubbed over and fails to deliver. Why are their attempts at acting so lackluster? Nothing is ever said about what the creatures are. Are they here on a whim or is there some sort of invasion going on? This brings us to another headache-inducing question, are the aliens intelligent? The mid credits have an even more bothersome premise. The CGI on the creature trying to escape was so subpar, it was highly disappointing. Even though the creature’s design was relatively decent, the poor CGI ruins it completely.
I did hope that Dark Parasite would offer some form of a distraction at the very least. Sadly, much of the film is devoid of aliens and there is a disappointing lack of action. Eventually it set in that watching this would be a saga in the utmost sense of the word as opposed to a joy.
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