DVD Review: Samurai Zombie
Samurai Zombie (2008)
Distributor: MVM
Directed by: Tak Sakaguchi
Starring: Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Issei Ishida, Tak Sakaguchi, Airi Nakajima, Shintarô Matsubara
Review by: Ben Bussey
Rule number one for family groups in horror movies: never go on a road trip. It will not work out well. You will end up in the middle of nowhere, your vehicle will be commandeered by maniacs, and everyone will suffer. That’s exactly what happens to this unassuming Japanese family as they drive through a quiet stretch of woodland and come into the crosshairs of some unsavoury criminal types. But just when everything seems fucked up enough, it transpires the region also plays host to some even more unsavoury living dead types. And thus things take a turn for the From Dusk Till Dawn-ish, as the gun-toting bad-asses and terrified civilians must work together to fight back. But is there any fighting the hand of destiny…?
You may be thinking, much as I was before watching Samurai Zombie, “oh great, another one of those.” As I said in my Robo-Geisha review (read here), the proliferation of absurdist gore coming out of Japan has quickly grown tedious; that which is intended as raucous and transgressive is already predictable and stale. However, while Samurai Zombie may hail from the same isle, it is not to be tarred with the same brush as those cyber-splatter flicks. Straight away there’s cause for optimism as the script comes from Ryuhei Kitamura, director of Versus, Godzilla: Final Wars and The Midnight Meat Train (now there’s a diverse CV). That the director here is Tak Sakaguchi, the lead actor in Versus, should also pique the interest of anyone with a taste for Eastern horror/action crossovers. Refreshingly devoid of body parts mutating into weapons, though certainly not lacking for gore, Samurai Zombie is a comparatively old school affair, harking back to the good old days of late 70′s/early 80′s zombie splatter.
This is not to say that Samurai Zombie isn’t still as bulging with self-conscious quirkiness as its peers in Japanese gore. Severed heads fly hundreds of feet in the wake of geysers of blood, a guy casually walks around with his intestines spilling out, a testicle gets bitten off, and the link between guns and penis envy is made explicit. While it’s pretty funny stuff, it’s also easy to see how in a lesser film it might have felt cheap. The key is that there’s more going on in Samurai Zombie than just the gore gags. Kitamura hasn’t overlooked the importance of plot and character. The anxious parents, the adolescent daughter, the young son, the criminal couple with the New Wave hairdos – each character has a lot going on, and it’s all handled in an intelligent and compelling manner, building to a finale that is unexpected not only in how it resolves the plot, but also how much palpable emotion it generates in doing so.
It certainly ain’t the new Battle Royale or Audition, but as far as contemporary Japanese horror goes, Samurai Zombie is certainly one of the stronger entries I’ve seen for a while. It’s got the silly gore and the cartoonish humour, but it’s also got more than a hint of soul.
