GROWTH
Sub-Genre- Creature/Parasite
Cast Members of Note- Mircea Monroe, Christopher Shand, Brian Krause, Richard Riehle, and Nora Kilpatrick.
Directed by Gabriel Cowan
What's it About?- Growth is a story about a small, inbred island community that strikes it rich creating genetically altered pearls and selling the perfect gems to dumb, rich chicks for millions of dollars. I've never understood pearls. diamonds, yes. rubies and emeralds, sure. Pearls though, always look cheap and gaudy to me, and now that I know evil parasites live inside of them, I say to hell with the pearl industry!
Anyways (sorry about that little outburst...), long story short, a mad scientist on the island decided not to stop limit his experiments to only pearls, and mess with human DNA too, creating a parasite that burrows into people and basically takes them over. For years this remains the islands dirty little secret until a group of meddling kids comes along and everything turns to shit.
From here on out it's everybody versus a gang of nasty, self aware slugs that want to burrow their way inside of them and give them super powers... wait... the geeky guy did get really tough and cool after the slug assimilated him, so why is everyone so afraid? I guess being tough and getting laid isn't worth letting something burrow it's way into your brain, huh? Pansies!
Will the kids get off of the island, or become possessed slug zombies? Will the pearls get off of the island, and infect the worlds gaudiest women? Will any chick in this movie besides the townie get naked? I won't ruin what comes next, but suffice it to say that there's really only one way all of this can end...
The Good- I was 100% expecting this one to be some shitty, Syfy-like cheese fest that would make me cringe and not want to watch horror for another week or so, but damn was I wrong. Growth was a kick ass little flick, and although some of it looked and felt a bit on the cheap side, I was a happy camper when it was over. The movie isn't perfect, but it gets a lot of things right and ends up being pretty fun.
It goes without saying that Growth is the same kind of movie as Slither or Night of the Creeps is, only here the humor is sparse, and there's a creepy and odd island community added to the mix.
The Bad- Some of the characters actions made little or no sense making they or their actions into nothing more than devices to move the plot forward. That drives me nuts. I think this movie was smart enough to have moved forward without such cheap "character development", but at least it wasn't blatantly careless or didn't happen too often.
The Downright Horrendous- Amanda Lane? That sounds a little to close to Mandy Lane to be mere coincidence! I call name theft shenanigans!
The Gory- All sorts of parasites burrowing in flesh and eyes, people getting their limbs ripped off, puking, vomiting, gun violence, salt violence... this one is creepy crawly and not for the squeamish.
The Naked- There was a quick shot of a townie boob, but nothing from the main ladies. Le Sigh.
Best Line- "You still have a chance to walk away from this." Fun stuff.
What did we learn?- When isolated Island Folk tell you to go away, listen to them. Also, screw pearls and buy diamonds.
The Master Says- B- (7.0/10) When it comes down to it, Growth is better than your average bear when it comes to the parasite/body invasion sub genre. It reminded me a lot of movies like Slither and Night of the Creeps ( sans comedy), with touches of The Wicker Man or Harper's Island thrown in to make it interesting.If you like the aforementioned types of horror flicks, then I say see it when you can, and do your best not to squirm too much.Final Thoughts- Oh this movie had some lovely's in it, yes it did!
