I was very happy to find this 1995 independent horror flick shot in Tucson, Arizona to be excellent, well-written, and suspenseful. _Parasite_ is an expertly knit albeit virtually unknown feature concerning Mesmerism gone awry. While nasty occurrences abound, the film relies more on plot than on gore.
David Gaffney plays Richard, a college science professor and professional skeptic. When he meets Miss Vohich (Julie Matias), a woman whose cane and limp belie her strong powers of suggestion, the demonstration she puts on of her abilities provokes and startles him out of his dogmaticism. He eagerly enters into a series of experiments with her that threaten to ruin his life. His students, fellow professors, and even his fiance (played by Marissa Hall) become perplexed by the increasingly distant, bizarre behavior of Richard, as it is slowly revealed Miss Vohich possesses powers even beyond her normal ones of Mesmerism.
Being a student of the works of the philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, I found the likening in the film of the demand of a personal human will (in this case, another person's will) with a parasite not entirely implausible. In more than one sense, whether psychological or spiritual or both, we all live by either affirming or denying our wills-- thus life can indeed be viewed in a Darwinist way as a war of weak against strong wills, and vice-versa. The film forsakes a true commentary on the questions it raises, but what is left for the viewer is still thought provoking.
This is fertile ground that the film trods well-- I am reminded that Freud, before founding Psychoanalysis, was a follower of Charcot, who practiced using suggestion as a therapy for hysteria. Weaving together Mesmerism, scientific enquiry, telepathy and the Supernatural, this is a thinking man's horror film that still packs a good dose of fun along the way.