Main cast: Mircea Monroe (Jamie Ackerman), Christopher Shand (Justin Roberts), Nora Kirkpatrick (Kristin Daniels), Brian Krause (Marco), Alexi Wasser (Sarah), Ian Patrick Williams (Mason Lane), Lou Richards (Dr Macavire), Robert Pike Daniel (Jake), Brad Culver (Andy), Mackenzie Brooke Smith (Gwen Anderson), Yousef Abu-Taleb (Sgt George Seitz), Jessica Dercks (Liz), Steven R O’Brien (Robert Anderson), Samantha Yonack (Jen Anderson), and Richard Riehle (Larkin)
Director: Gabriel Cowan
There is nothing like having the internet infrastructure down and keeping me offline to make me see what these people are showing on cable these days. Yes, cable still exists—imagine that. That’s how I come across Growth.
Right off the bat, I know this one is all about bad science. You see, some researchers decided that the best way to create superhumans is to insert worm-like parasites into human test subjects.
There are three screenwriters and two story consultants behind this thing, and yet none of them realizes that parasites by definition are organisms that feed on their hosts and will eventually harm or even kill these hosts. That’s basic science knowledge.
Yet, the researchers in this movie are shocked when the test subjects do display superhuman abilities, but the parasites feed on the hosts to get the energy to do these things. Also, they breed and soon the hosts are turning into zombie-like violent things that only want to infect others with parasite grubs.
Fortunately, this research was done on an island, and conveniently enough, the parasites can’t stand salt water. The hosts, in fact, melt away completely once they are immersed in the sea for even a short while. The people on that island may be screwed, but the rest of the world are safe… right?
Well, Jamie Ackerman receives news that she’s inherited her parents’ property on that same island, and it’s worth millions, ooh. Excited about the possibility of selling off the house to pay for her sickly brother Justin’s treatments, she and her sibling along with her boyfriend Marco and some friends head over to the island. Soon, some of them die while Justin gets infected and becomes a superpowered psycho.
Meanwhile, the remnants of the research team want to get their hands on Jamie, and in fact, the whole inheritance thing is a ruse to get back here, because they believe her late parents may have somehow left her the formula for an antidote to eliminate the parasites.
Wait, shouldn’t these people already have the antidote made before they start putting those parasites into people? Are they really scientists or just morons that believe just because they identify as such, they are qualified to do actual scientist things?
Even if I can overlook the horrible “science”, the movie comes off as an unimaginative and messy movie cobbled together from scenes that try hard to emulate moments from better zombie and zombie-like movies in the past. Comparisons to the original Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Creeps, for example, are hard to avoid because some key scenes feel like a blow by blow reconstruction homage. Unfortunately, because of the hilariously awful CGI and the overall inferior quality of this thing, these scenes only make me wonder why I’m not watching those better movies instead.
Mircea Monroe is adequate, but Christopher Shand is completely forgettable and charisma-free for someone playing the “sexy and dangerous” villain role. The rest of the cast members playing Jamie’s hangers-on are wasted as dead meat walking, and the only memorable fellow among the rest of the cast members is Richard Riehle, mostly because he has a glorious mustache and his character acts like he’s helping everyone just so that the movie will end quickly and he can leave the island ASAP.
The movie also has some strange scenes early on that seem to hint at subplots that are later forgotten or abandoned. For example, the rest of the locals act like they are in some kind of cult at first, but this aspect is never brought up again. It sure feels like this thing wanted to be something larger, on a grander scale, at first, only to have to clumsily scale itself down later due to budgetary and other resource constraints. Still, this scaling down could have been done more smoothly, I’m sure.
Also, while I know the budget issue can’t be helped. the CGI is really, really bad here. It’s hard to be scared by the parasitic maggots when they look so fake.
The proportion is off too—when they tear themselves out from their hosts, for example, there are what seems like dozens of these large things that really shouldn’t be possible because there is no way the host could sustain so many big creatures while still looking and acting like a healthy person. These maggots should have been smaller, much smaller. Just think of that 1988 monster feature Slugs—the size of the slugs exploding from the poor guy’s head is more realistic and hence more terrifying as a result.
At any rate, Growth is an amateurishly-cobbled together movie especially let down by limp performances from that fellow playing the lead antagonist. It’s fine as background noise, but pay it any attention and be prepared to be disappointed.
