The Machine Girl (2008)

Directed by: Noboru Iguchi
Starring: Minase Yashiro, Asami, Nobuhiro Nishimura, Honoka, Kentaro Shimazu, Ryousuke Kawamura

(out of 4)

Wow, don’t I feel inadequate!

About 13 minutes in to Noboru Iguchi’s Kataude mashin gâru (from here on referred to as The Machine Girl), teenage yakuza/ninja in training Sho (Nobuhiro Nishimura) is made to drink his father’s (Kentaro Shimazu) blood, which flows from dad’s wrist to son’s mouth in copious amounts of crimson, to “strengthen their bond”. Of course, by this time, we’ve already seen our heroine Ami Hyuga (a cute and tough Minase Yashiro in her first acting role) take revenge on multiple teen yakuza bullies by blasting them to pieces with a machine gun attached to the stump where her arm used to be.

The Machine Girl is full of flying limbs, decapitated heads, chopped fingers, and spurting blood so plentiful that in some scenes it sprays the camera lens - just one of the few homages to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead  movies (the giveaway is the arm-machine-gun attachment, which in 2008 generates comparisons to Rodriguez’ Planet Terror, but when I see souped-up ass-kicker Ami dispatch multiple assholes in gory fashion, it seems to me like she’s a certain reincarnation of Bruce Campbell’s Ash). And like Ash, who was a mild mannered S-Mart employee turned unwanted hero, so too, is Ami: originally non-violent, shunned by her community for crimes her parents didn’t commit, wrongfully called a murderer, and having her brother Yu (Ryôsuke Kawamura) killed by Sho’s gang, she is finally driven to ironically fulfill the role assigned to her.

Oh my God! They’ve killed Kenny! You Bastards!

Later on, when physically tortured by Sho’s family, which includes the completely insane dragon lady mom (Honoka - another AV actress hottie who would be at home in a Tarantino flick), Ami begins her physical transformation into monster/instrument of revenge. But by that time, her psyche has already started the journey. Speaking of Tarantino, comparisons between Ami and Uma Thurman’s bride from the Kill Bill movies is not off the mark. Even the beginning title sequence seems ripped from Tarantino, who of course gets his inspiration from 70s grindhouse cinema. So it’s the east stealing from the west stealing from the east, and around and around we go!

Let’s be honest here - this movie isn’t for the kids. While it’s true that the film is done up like a live action anime (the music sounds like it comes straight out of Dragonball Z; the camera likes to pan right to left over a character’s face, just like in anime), and much of the gore is delivered over the top with humorous intent (think Riki-Oh, or maybe early Peter Jackson splatter like Bad Taste and Dead-Alive), it’s still pretty harsh stuff. Ami spraying blood from a headless victim into the face of the victim’s dad may be funny for the sheer balls of it, but seriously, damn. What about the poor chef forced to eat sushi made from his own fingers or the mother and son who have the tops of their heads sliced off and exchanged? I think you get the idea.

Not bad, but needs more soy and wasabi

Then again, bubbling up through all the pools of blood is this concept of that blood’s capacity to bond a family together. Whether someone is good or evil, they always have parents who love them, right? The strong ties between Ami and her brother, Sho and his parents, Takeshi and his parents Suguru and Miki, take center stage. For example, the ninja squad sent to kill Ami and Miki (Japanese model Asami - also hot) are, of course, slaughtered in gory fashion. The grieving parents are then recruited into the “Super Mourner Gang” to get revenge. (They all wear pictures of their slain sons on their chest, while occasionally shouting out their kids names). Iguchi is interested in exploring themes of revenge begetting revenge, and of blood feuds, and of the bonds between parents and children. That is, when he’s not aiming geysers of blood at us.

The performances, especially from the female leads, are energetic which matches director Iguchi’s hyper kinetic visual style of filming. It’s Honoka’s evil babe Mamma Hattori that steals the show, however - her character is completely off the deep end - I mean, her weapon of choice is a drill bra. That’s right, a drill bra.

Comes from the Victoria’s Secret in Akihabara

The Machine Girl is surreal, gory, offensive, funny, outrageous, twisted, and absolutely, positively Japanese.

- Bill G

Jisatsu saakuru (Suicide Club) (2002)

Director: Shion Sono

Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Saya Hagiwara

(out of 4)

Well, I ain’t gonna touch it

Certain Japanese movies of recent years, like Battle Royale and the movies of Takashi Miike or Kiyoshi Kurosawa, seem to have some themes of despair and desperation running through them. Jisatsu saakuru (AKA Suicide Club AKA Suicide Circle) is a good fit into this kind of group - a gory concoction of horror, black comedy, and social commentary.

It begins with an eye-opener - 54 Japanese schoolgirls lock hands and in unison, jump off a subway platform in front of an oncoming train (while smiling). The resulting splatter of crimson (Evil Dead style) is enough to make the most jaded horror fan sit up and take notice. A bowling bag is left at the scene - inside is a roll of patches of human skin, stitched together. Soon, unexplained suicides are happening all over Tokyo, more bags are being found, and the police seem helpless to do anything - given the nature of the deaths, opening a criminal investigation is apparently not an easy task.

(more…)

Shiryô-gari (Junk) (1999)

Director: Atsushi Muroga

Starring: Kaori Shimamura, Miwa Yanagizawa, Mark C. Mohouse

(out of 4)

he had to leave the Nightmare City set due to headache

The Japanese postmodern zombie horror flick Shiryô-gari (hereafter referred to as Junk - no pun intended) is one of the better efforts in the ever-popular action horror genre. The setup is typical - Yakuza gangsters meet in an abandoned warehouse for a deal that goes wrong in more ways than one. When not fighting each other, they have to fight off the living dead, who seem to be eternally hungry. What works great here is execution - the action is well orchestrated, the gore plentiful, and the thing is tightly edited for maximum fat-trimming. Basically, folks, what we’ve got is a poorly acted, super cheesy, and yet no-nonsense type of zombie movie that throws us the crumbs of something fresh at the same time it’s stealing from every horror movie in existence.

no shit

Indeed, what separates Junk from the pack of Fulci and Romero rip-offs is the little touches put in by director Atsushi Muroga and his screenwriters (Yoko Kuzuki, Emiko Terao, J.B. Baker). The opening jewel heist ends in gunshots, but unlike From Dusk Till Dawn, the perpetrators don’t shoot to kill. When encountering the zombies for the first time, our anti-heroes figure out quickly who they are dealing with (obviously, by now, everybody knows what a zombie looks like and what his favorite food is). The secret experiment involving DNX (up and coming rappers, take note), the chemical which reanimates the dead, is a product of the US Army(!), (perhaps symbolizing the Japanese annoyance with the continuous presence of the United States military in Okinawa, but I’m just theorizing). One of the zombies eats his own intestines. We even get a zombie villain (Miwa Yanagizawa), who is not only smart enough to deactivate a self-destruct computer countdown, but has somehow gained super-strength and agility. A silly plot development, to be sure, but in a movie with tongue firmly planted in cheek, you learn to roll with it. Our heroine, (played by Kaori Shimamura), is spunky and likable - find me a heroine in another movie that will reach into the intestines of a corpse to retrieve an important set of keys.

this bathroom looks occupied

The annoyances of the film - like the use of English language dialogue that is difficult to understand, horrible acting from many involved (the army captain played by Mark C. Mohouse comes to mind as unbelievably bad), and amusingly awful lines (like: “Life is a complex combination of chemicals. It’s very complicated, but in fact, very simple.”) - are minor quibbles when taking the whole creation into account. Here we have a director borrowing from a wide catalogue of zombie horror - I spotted the previously mentioned From Dusk Till Dawn, as well as Evil Dead Trap, Evil Dead, Re-Animator, and Return of the Living Dead, not to mention a good dose of Manga and Italian influence (the zombies owe their appearance to Fulci much more than Romero). The evil zombie-creating-experiment scenario even reminds one of Bruno Mattei’s awful Hell of the Living Dead, but the formulas are so well mixed together and sprinkled with Japanese flair that one can easily overlook the plot’s lack of originality.

cam-whores.com

In many ways, as action/gore flicks go, this is a superior film to Ryuhei Kitamura’s Versus, since it realizes that fast-moving setpieces have to be properly set up and spaced apart to be effective; otherwise the result is more numbing than energetic. As a scary (or serious) movie, Junk doesn’t work at all, but as gore-filled popcorn fare that - dare I say it - offers sly commentary on the increasing hegemony of the west, it’s fun.

- Bill Gordon

Ju-on (The Grudge) (2003)
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Starring: Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa

The Grudge (2004)
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Bill Pullman, Ted Raimi, Ryo Ishibashi

hey kid - it’s not nice to stare

The Japanese horror movie sensation Ju-on (subtitled: The Grudge), having been recently remade in America, isn’t even the first movie in the original series - it’s the third - and I, for one, am totally baffled by all of it. The only grudge here is the one I am holding against the people who suggested I watch this insanely dull and unscary piece of cultural Zeitgeist.It seems that Ringu has had more influence than I thought, but something tells me that Ringu represents a genre that’s a one trick pony. Ju-on also gives us a dead kid, apparently killed violently and turned into a ghost, but we are never clear on the circumstances of his death, except that it involves a feline somehow. (Sometimes the kid screeches like a cat). As far as I can make out, he haunts his old house, then follows people around, kills them somehow, and then they become ghosts, and the whole thing begins again. The entire movie functions on this concept, as we are introduced to varying sorts of characters, all who undergo the same fate. By the time the third victim falls, one starts to feel ripped off. The movie is just like its featured haunted house - a man outside shouts enthusiastically about all the frights that lie therein but all you really get is people jumping out at you from the darkness, a fake corpse here and there, and finally, a dude with a chainsaw chasing you out, right into the gift shop.

“Just how many Ju-on movies are there??”

Don’t misunderstand me - a movie doesn’t have to have a complicated plot to be good horror. It doesn’t even have to make logical sense (and many scenes in Ju-on do not). But it does have to be scary and/or keep my attention. Spooky eyes wide open with white makeup - not scary. A dead woman slowly crawling down the steps while making strange noises - not scary. The film is an extremely long setup with little payoff, and the characters involved are so illogical in their actions that I could never accept them as real. If a ghost is coming at you, why sit there and stare at it? (see: any Fulci film). Why jump into bed and pull the covers over your head? Who knows? Ju-on is populist tripe made to scare 13 year old girls and their mothers who, let’s face it, aren’t exactly discriminating.

more scary “looking”

When a movie like this fails in the fright department, the rest falls apart. By the time the film ends, we are nowhere closer to understanding the whys of the piece than we were at the beginning. There is a sense at one point in the movie that the “grudge” may indeed be some sort of plague that could decimate the entire population of Tokyo. Now that would have held my interest. But the movie is too interested in showing the different ways that you can say “boo” to a person - perhaps scary the first time but an hour later it’s mere annoyance.

A Scene from the Original or the Remake?
The Loser receives both films.

And what can be said about a Hollywood remake that doesn’t do anything different? The American version of The Grudge is nothing but Ju-on with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the leading role. It’s practically duplicated shot-for-shot (they didn’t even bother to change the setting from Tokyo), which means everything that’s wrong with the first film is perfectly copied for our displeasure. Same director(Shimizu), same screeching kid (Yuya Ozeki), same security footage, same elevator scene, same lack of any sense or thrills. I know Americans hate subtitles and all, so why does this film have them? What I am saying is - why bother to reshoot? Just repackage the original movie with English opening titles. Bill Pullman is decent for the small role he was given and Ted Raimi does a bit part (somebody needs to tell brother Sam to quit encouraging/executive producing these things) but there’s nothing else to be said about the picture - that’s how dull it is. Both movies are interchangeable - see the original or see the clone, it doesn’t matter. At the end you’ll still wonder how you got suckered into watching another rehashed Japanese ghost story that was played out years ago. Between this, Ring, and Dark Water remakes, I’m wondering if Hollywood has any originality left these days. The same might be said of Japanese cinema - it seems Shimizu has been tapped for the American Grudge 2 and the Japanese Ju-on 3. Well, at least he’s consistent. - Bill Gordon

Cruel Intentions

“Wow! It’s Lone Starr, in my bedroom!”

Ju-on and The Grudge are available at Amazon:

Ringu 2 (2001)

Director: Hideo Nakata

Starring: Miki Nakatani, Rikiya Otaka, Nanako Matsushima

(out of 4)

The Ring Two (2005)

Director: Hideo Nakata

Starring: Naomi Watts, David Dorfman, Sissy Spacek, Simon Baker

1/2 (out of 4)

Hey, I’ve seen this movie! Ring 17, right?

Hideo Nakata is the man responsible for the Japanese movie Ringu, (itself a remake of a Japanese TV-movie made in 1995), which kicked off an Asian horror craze both in Japan and in the United States as well as spawning two sequels, a prequel, an American remake, a Korean remake, and even a TV series. Ringu 2, also directed by Nakata, is actually the second sequel to his first film.

Stay with me. Nakata’s Ringu and its first sequel, Rasen, were shot back-to-back from two novels by Japanese author Koji Suzuki. Audiences loved Ringu but hated Rasen (which had a different director and certainly took the story in a different direction). Therefore, Nakata was tasked with doing a new “official” sequel, called Ringu 2. Honestly, he shouldn’t have bothered - Rasen is, in my humble opinion, a more interesting picture, even if isn’t that good either.

Now nobody will ever know Japan’s funniest home video

Newcomers to The Ring series will probably be wondering what the fuss is all about. Well it turns out that in Ringu, a reporter and her son come across a strange videotape that causes the unfortunate viewer to die exactly seven days later. The videotape is sent by creepy long-haired girl Sadako (Samara in the American version), who possessed psychic powers while she was alive and was thrown down a deep well by her mother, who later committed suicide. The only way to break the curse is to make a copy of the tape for someone else to see, thus spreading the curse like a virus. Brilliant stuff, actually, this modern take on the urban legend - the illustration of media as the message, being viral in nature, and the only antidote is to spread it to others. It’s understandably popular in the Internet age where memes travel like wildfire.

Being forced to watch Ju-on

So, what’s the story with Ringu 2? Well, it turns out that Sadako isn’t through with poor Yoichi (Rikiya Otaka) and his mother Reiko (Nanako Matsushima). Yoichi seems to be developing psychic powers like Sadako, and when Reiko is killed, Mai (Miki Nakatani) steps in to help. Mai was the girlfriend of Yoichi’s dad in the first film, and has been investigating the strange events surrounding the videotape and his death. She also happens to possess some psychic ability, and sure enough, she’ll have to use all the strength she has to stop Sadako from coming back into the world through a new human host. So yes, it’s another silly possession story that meanders around from one scene to another while nothing of any consequence really happens. The only truly interesting sequence of the piece is a scene in an asylum where Sadako’s well appears on the television causing panic among the inmates (the only ones who can sense Sadako’s presence). It’s always the crazies, isn’t it? Predictable, too - Mai has visions on cue and faints right around the time every audience member says “I bet now she’ll faint.”

Then things get really goofy when some doctor explains it all away as “energy transfer” or some hokum, and attempts to solve everything by attaching electrodes to Mai and Yoichi, hoping to transfer Sadako’s spirit into a giant pool of water. Yes, it’s that dumb. Then there’s the all too familiar subtext of fear being the true killer - wait for the moment where little Yoichi will have to “transfer” his fear out, and then just sit around waiting for the final “boo” moment which seems like it was cribbed straight from Candyman.

Trust me, Aurora Snow is a good actress!

These days, Hollywood likes to steal from Asian cinema, but it doesn’t trust American audiences to watch movies with subtitles. I suppose it’s like that walk-and-chew-gum scenario. Naturally, we’ve got remakes up to our ears these days - The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, and of course, Ring 2. And who better to helm the remake than Hideo Nakata himself? The problem is, he’s got writer Ehren Kruger to deal with. You remember Scream 3 and Reindeer Games, don’t you?

Now nobody will ever know America’s funniest home video

Rachel (Naomi Watts) and her creepy son Aiden (David Dorfman, probably slated for an M. Night Shyamalan film in the future) are trying to forget the events of the first Ring by moving to small town Astoria, Oregon. Samara’s down but not out - a videotape turns up and kills a high school student (in the movie’s opening sequence - the best scene in the movie and a glimpse of what might have been). But then, Rachel burns the cassette, and thus the videotape element of the story is completely discarded in favor of - you guessed it - a possession story as Samara tries to come back to the world of the living through Aiden. Like Ringu 2, Ring 2 takes the Nightmare on Elm St. 2 route - jettisoning the medium (video cassette/dreams) and bringing the killer into our world. But Ring 2 is stupid and pointless - at least Freddy’s Revenge had subtext to chew on. Ring 2 has nothing but the same template from the first film - it even tries to reproduce the horse scene in a completely ridiculous sequence involving CGI deer attacking a car. “Don’t Stop!” cries Aiden, but does Rachel listen? Hell, no. Aiden’s temperature drops five degrees below normal but does Rachel take him to the hospital? What do you think? I’m not saying there’s no ghost and that she’s crazy - I’m saying that there’s a ghost and she’s crazy.

You ran over my father. Prepare to die.

In a rather amusing scene, Sissy Spacek plays a whacked out mental patient who tells Rachel that the only way to beat Samara is to “listen to your son”. Let’s see her explaining that one to social services after Aiden tells her to drown him in the bathtub. There is a good bathroom scene with nice water effects, and another where Samara/Aiden forces a social worker to commit suicide, but on the other hand I keep thinking about the TV Screen/”Follow my voice” stuff stolen from Poltergiest, and then there’s the ending. Rachel allows herself to be pulled through the TV set into Samara’s well, after determining that Samara just wants a mommy, which frankly is way too close to the ending of Dark Water to be a coincidence. But she doesn’t even go through with it, and we’re fed another yawn-inducing escape-from-the-well scene, proving to everyone that Nakata and company have drained this particular well dry. At this point they’re just throwing things at the wall, hoping something will stick. “I’m not your fucking mommy!” Rachel yells. Samara should count her lucky stars for that. - Bill Gordon

Poseur. I invented Goth.