The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Takashi Miike jumps aboard the mid-00s fad for secondary world fantasy films, creating a realm of spirits where he and his makeup and creature effects team go absolutely wild
A mind-bogglingly wacky entry in the gonzo Japanese splatter film featuring a crazed bloodbath as Japan is overrun by zombies. This goes frequently nuts featuring vehicles and plans made up of zombie bodies
Full-length follow-up to Hard Revenge, Milly and the same mix of ferocious action and over-the-top splatter. Despite a large budget, this is marginally the lesser in sheer entertainment
Ferociously entertaining Japanese film about a cyborg-enhanced heroine on a revenge trail. Mostly a series of ridiculously over-the-top action moves combined with copious degrees of blood
An early Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, this starts out as a peculiar deadpan comedy about an office filled with strange characters before emerging as a slasher film of sorts as a hulking security guard eliminating people
A thoroughly demented Japanese sf/horror film about passengers of a crashed plane being menaced by a body-snatching alien vampire. Quite unlike any other Japanese monster movie, the colour schemes alone leave you giddy
A Japanese entry in the Gonzo Killer Shark film fad, an entertainingly demented effort with sharks invading a hot springs and emerging out of hot tubs. This has been greeted as a new cult movie
A live-action Japanese-made mecha/transformer film that creates a dark industrial world as setting and fills it with some stunning effects
A thinking person’s disaster movie depicting Japan’s sinking into the ocean
Very strange Japanese ghost story that has been rediscovered as a cult classic. It resembles a film like Willy Wonka turned into a haunted house film where the intention seems to have been to be a bizarre and wacky as possible
A fascinating Japanese film where a man has to descend into Hell, designed along the lines of Dante’s Inferno, to save the soul of his loved one. The depiction of Hell is filled with luridly surreal scenes
This was the first anime film made in CGI, an ambitious SF film involving a time travel plot and a struggle against a machine-dominated future
The importation of anime director Shinji Aramaki to helm the latest Starship Troopers film provides dazzling animation and hardware, along with some hard, furious military action that easily outstrips all the other films. On the other hand, the film never goes beyond being about soldiers shooting up bugs
Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host’s bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school
The sixth Godzilla film, the first where the series combines elements of space opera – a typical entry of the era and colourfully entertaining about it too
The gonzo Japanese splatter film is one of the insanely demented corners of genre cinema today. This is a prime example, filled with mind-bogglingly perverse anatomical rearrangements and attachments, the screen is awash with blood and everything directed with a mad cartoonish energy
A clearly more commercial film from cult Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto of Tetsuo: The Iron Man fame. This draws influence from Ring but this lacks much of the obsessive drive of Tsukamoto’s other films
An anthology of short anime pieces from various directors, including creator Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult creator of Akira. The four episodes vary from historical to fantasy to futuristic warfare and, as with any anthology, vary in quality from the okay to the watchable
Reboot of the old Japanese superhero series, conducted with the epic scale, mass destruction and dazzling effects of the more recent Godzilla films
A reboot of the classic Japanese tv series about a superhero who goes into action on a motorcycle using a suit to transform into a grasshopper being
Spookily effective Japanese ghost story about a mother’s pilgrimage around a series of shrines to raise her daughter’s spirit from the dead
The most sustained film Takashi Miike has made in some time. In this case, he adapts Yotsuya Kaidan, the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories, which has been filmed multiple times, but rather than offer a straight telling also adds a layer where the story comes to replay itself among the actors in the play
This anime has a surprising number of similarities to Upside Down, which was released one year earlier, both being set in two different worlds where gravity in each operates in the opposite directions and of the forbidden relationship between a boy and a girl from either world
Mamoru Hosoda film nominated for the Best Animated Film at Academy Awards. A young boy jealous at the arrival of a baby sister is visited by her future self and travels through time to meet his family at different periods
The directorial debut of Satoshi Kon, overseen by Katsuhiro Otomo, an anime concerning a troubled Japanese pop singer being cyber-stalked by a doppelganger
Beautiful anime from Makoto Shinkai, made in the Hayao Miyazaki style set in an alternate history Japan concerning a mysterious hyper-dimensional tower
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa conducts a remake of the British thriller Seance on a Wet Afternoon. Where the original was a mundane film that depicted a kidnap scheme involving a fake medium, Kurosawa builds this out as an actual ghost story
Probably the least great of Hayao Miyazaki’s films. The plot feels recycled from The Little Mermaid while Miyazaki’s recurrent themes seem more perfunctory and the film lacks many of the beautiful contrasts of epic and fragile he specialises in
From Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a ghost story that creates an incredibly haunted atmosphere. As with most of Kurosawa’s work, dazzling ideas sit alongside a murky and impenetrable plot where you are baffled trying to make sense of what is happening
One of the earliest works from Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult director of Akira, although he only contributes one episode to an anthology of anime tales with the common theme of robots. The collection contains some impressive and visually striking episodes
Extremely twisted Japanese film that plays out like a conceptual mix of Saw and Fear Factor (even though it predates either) wherein contestants are locked in a room and get to challenge each other to engage in more and more extreme acts against the other
Part of the fad for gonzo Japanese splatter films we had in the late 00s, featuring absurdly over-the-top splatter effects and demented action sequences.; Concerning cyborg-enhanced geisha who wade into battle going through a deliriously silly range of bio-mechanical transformations
A remarkable little Japanese zombie film about a family who adopt a zombie maid. This is shot kitchen sink style and becomes a study in the way her blank presence begins to affect everyone around her
Japanese attempt to jump aboard the Star Wars fad, a vigorous and colourful retelling of The Seven Samurai as a space opera
The better of two spinoff films made for the tenth anniversary of the Ju-on/The Grudge series. The series is suffering over-familiarity, but this manage to create moments of uncanny spookiness
An appealingly charming anime about the friendship between a lonely boy and a mermaid. She gains legs whenever music is playing and they form a pop band together
Katsuhiro Otomo overseen anime about the discovery of Noah’s Ark, an alien artifact that gives a child vast psychic powers in a swathe of destruction not dissimilar to Akira
Takashi Shimizu’s follow-up to the international hit of Ju-on: The Grudge. These Ju-on films become repetitive after a time but you cannot deny that Shimizu delivers the spooky goods here
Toho Films obtained the rights to King Kong to pit him against Godzilla in King Kong Vs Godzilla and then made this entertainingly silly sequel where Kong fights a robot copy of himself
A documentary about Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki that offers fascinating insight into the working processes of the amazingly genteel, often frank Miyazaki who seems a fount of youthful vigour
The second in a trilogy of Japanese vampire films that came influenced by the Hammer Dracula films. This generates a reasonable degree of spooky eerieness.
Cult director Takashi Miike makes a film about a teacher who goes on a shooting rampage through a school where Miike takes an unrestrained glee in the carnage
Set in a future where libraries have armies fighting against the militarised forces of censorship. The social scenario strains credibility but this Japanese Young Adult film works well
A live-action remake of the 1970s anime series Space Cruiser Yamato made with stupendous effects, although now much of the plot has been rendered familiar by assorted Star Wars copies
Another highly entertaining entry in the Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film about a schoolgirl who seeks revenge with her arm stump replaced by a Gatling gun
Ambitious SF film about a space expedition to save the Sun, this bombed at the time but is not uninteresting
Studio Ghibli adaptation of a classic Japanese folktale from Hayao Hiyazaki’s mentor Isao Takahata. This is a slower, very different film than Hayao Miyazaki’s, the animation designed like a traditional Japanese woodprint. Never quite soars like Miyazaki’s films do but not without its charms
The great Osamu Dezai makes a colourful anime that jumps aboard the Stars Wars space opera fad
One of the more unusual Japanese monster movies, one that operates just as much a samurai film, concerning the stone god of a mountain that awakens to defend downtrodden peasants
Perversely original anime about a sex robot in the aftermath of civilisation who is transformed into a human. Imagine Pinocchio by way of H.R. Giger
Fascinatingly torrid US-Japan production about a man who develops a second head on his shoulder that takes over his personality
The third film from former Studio Ghibli employee Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Yonebayashi is seen as the carrier of Hayao Miyazaki’s mantle, so much do his films look like lost Miyazaki works. This is sweet and amiable, even if it never hits the emotional heights Miyazaki does
The eighth Godzilla film featuring the introduction of his son Minya in a shameless pitch for juvenile audiences. The series is no longer taking itself seriously, although ends up more likeable than some of the other entries of this period
In the late 2000s, Japan has produced a series of films drenched in gore, featuring absurd creature effects and action moves; this was the first of them – a wonderfully cartoonish film with rival bio-mechanoid creatures fighting
Lushly beautiful Japanese film from a Chinese folklore tale about a mortal who marries a snake goddess. An early Japanese colour film with fantastical touches way ahead of their time
The thirteenth Godzilla film and a point that the series was no longer taking itself seriously. On the other hand, this is something that actually works in the films favour to create a sublime silliness
Japanese SF film that makes a rather enjoyable magpie collage out of a Terminator time travel action plot married to John Woo and Matrix action stylistics
An earlier effort from Shion Sono that concerns itself with hair extensions that take over and kill their host. More straightforward than many of Sono’s other works but the outlandish of the effects make the film
Japanese film about teams that engage in combat tournaments with hordes of Smurf-like creatures. This spends too much time on its high school drama cliches but eventually finds the dementia of its concept at the climax
A Japanese horror film that winds a convoluted plot involving stolen corpses, a blackmarket in organ harvesting, split personality, twins and religious cults
Fascinatingly original anime set in an alternate history Steampunk version of Victorian England that has developed a technology based on Frankenstein’s corpse resurrection experiments
Godzilla director Ishiro Honda makes a colourfully entertaining space opera about Earth’s battle to fight off an alien invasion force on The Moon
Cult anime about a monosyllabic vampire hunter moving across a hallucinatory post-apocalyptic dispatching mutants and vampires
The second of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films, this gets the essentials right and delivers some stunningly epic anime action scenes
The third in a trilogy of spookily eerie Japanese vampire films. This echoes the basics of Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire in being set at a girls’ boarding school, which is spun in interesting ways
Surreal Japanese horror film in which the world is taken over by spiral patterns. A strange and trippy film.
Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura creates a gripping survival thriller about a group of friends driving home who become trapped on a small stretch of road by a sniper
This gets full marks for a WTF set-up, an anime that imagines Batman and most of the villains transplanted back to feudal Japan. There is fun to seeing the familiar characters reinterpreted in terms of Japanese imagery
A cultish Japanese Women in Prison film made with a wild ferocity as a female prisoner makes an escape and leads a team of women as they take revenge against men who seeks to abuse them
Not a seventh sequel to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, this adapts the videogame of the same name. Dazzling anime action but is take-no-prisoners with explanations about what is happening to non game players
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a director who specialises in cryptic spooky horror films. This is a sequel to his earlier alien invasion film Before We Vanish about aliens come to steal concepts from people’s minds
If Hayao Miyazaki ever follows through on his threat to retire, the one most likely inheritor would be Mamoru Hosoda. This is a perfectly enjoyably film that is sort of The Karate Kid by way of Disney’s The Jungle Book
An early work from Takashi Miike, an ultra-violent comic-book variant on RoboCop about a Yazkuza enforcer who is incarnated in a cyborg body and goes seeking revenge
The concluding chapter of the trilogy of live-action Fullmetal Alchemist films, this follows the manga’s storyline closely and brings the series to an epic conclusion
Yoshiaki Kawajiri, director of Ninja Scroll and Wicked City, steps in to make a sequel(?)/reboot(?) to the cult 1985 anime with visually enthralling regard
An entertainingly violent Japanese comic-book of a movie in which a classroom of school pupils is abandoned on an island with weapons to eliminate one another. Frequently cited as the inspiration for The Hunger Games
Classic anime space opera adventure made not long after Star Wars and filled with moments of glorious visual poetry including the conceptually absurd image of a spacegoing train
A sweet and quite lovely anime where a girl befriends the boy she pines after being offered a mask that transforms her into a cat body – only to then have her own body stolen
The twelfth film from Hayao Miyzaki at age 82, a quasi-autobiographical if a slightly less classic work. A renaissance of many Miyazaki themes as a boy follows a heron though into a strange fantasy otherworld
Akira director/creator Katsuhiro Otomo returns with this live-action manga adaptation about a wandering exorcist. Very different to any of Otomo’s anime, this is much quieter and rooted in Japanese folklore but has some undeniably way out scenes
Likeable puppet animated film about a time-travelling boy and his monkey companion
Live-action film based on an anime series where the original is built out with a series of of extraordinarily gorgeous over-ornamented visuals set in a strange retro-future world
Studio Ghibli anime in which a girl saves the life of a cat only to be drawn into a world of cats where a cat prince decides she will be his bride
A rather hilarious live-action manga adaptation that depicts the inner workings of the human body in terms of a series of talking blood cells. Not dissimilar to the US-made Osmosis Jones
The very strange Japanese director Shion Sono makes a film about an intergalactic package delivery android, although this is anything but a regular SF film. Filmed in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone.
A ghost story from Studio Ghibli – although rather than any Western equivalent that sets out to scare the pants off us, this is a sweetly tender story of friendship between two girls. The result more than capably approaches some of Hayao Miyazaki’s best
Robert Heinlein’s time travel novel gets a surprisingly faithful adaptation from Japan. This keeps the story’s double structure that tells one story and then with considerable conceptual dexterity reveals another hidden in the margins
The film that brought Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa to attention. Set around a series of hypnotism murders, this is, as with Kurosawa’s films, cryptic and frequently inexplicable but has an undeniable uncanniness
A bizarre Japanese about a documentary crew who make a film about a man who becomes a giant-sized superhero to fight off giant rubber monsters
From Makoto Shinkai who made Your Name., a lovely anime about a girl who can control the weather. An odd premise about orphans that soon develops unusual and unexpected depths
Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri, director of Wicked City and Ninja Scroll, concerning a suburb of Tokyo that is transformed into a borderland zone inhabited by demonic forces
Anime film about an android-overrun future Japan that resembles another episode of the Appleseed franchise
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa is known for his intensely uncanny and bafflingly cryptic horror films. Here he makes an alien invasion film, although a minimalist and very different one that proves quite fascinating
An imprisonment thriller with a difference, a work of Japanese BDSM erotica where a young teacher is imprisoned and erotically tortured. Quite out there and different to anything Western erotica turns out
The first of two sequels to the live-action Fullmetal Alchemist. The first felt uninspired but this and the third film expand the saga and its storyline out with considerable depth
Taking a leaf from The Wachowskis with The Animatrix, DC went to Japan and hired a bunch of anime directors to deliver an anthology of six different animated Batman stories
Japanese film that true to its title offers pits ninja against alien creatures. The film plants tongue considerably in cheek as it offers up a series of wildly fantastique action scenes and creature effects
The first anime film to be based on the manga, this is set in a future where the heroine is the head of a heavily armoured SWAT team fighting terrorists. Several different incarnations followed.
Mamoru Hosoda delivers an appealingly sweet anime about a girl who discovers that she has the ability to travel through time. Based on a popular Japanese Young Adult novel
Shinji Aramaki’s immediate sequel to his reboot of the Appleseed franchise. This lacks the visually stunning qualities of its predecessor and seems more conceptually muddled but Aramaki eventually gets it together