The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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
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
Controversial Japanese film about a virus that causes members of a family to engage in gay incest. This is perhaps the dullest taboo-breaking film I have ever sat through
A neglected Japanese classic. This is a haunting existential meditation on identity as a man loses his face in an accident but is then granted a lifelike mask
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
Enigmatic adaptation of a Japanese videogame where the protagonist is trapped inside a railway platform tunnel and must walk through the same corridor that repeats itself with minute variations to find the exit
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
This was the fourth film in the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot film series and concludes the saga. Rather than offering any answers or solution to the cryptic world we are in, this opts for a major letdown of a wrap-up
Third of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films. These films are frustrating – filled with stunning scenes of mecha battling cryptic alien machines but baffling as to what is going on
The second of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films, this gets the essentials right and delivers some stunningly epic anime action scenes
The first in a series of film reboots of the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime tv series. Epic animation but you need to the part of the fanbase of the original to understand what is going on
Welcome to the bizarre and decidedly politically incorrect world of the Japanese pinku film. Words fail me on this one, which concerns a demonic rapist that attacks a porn film shoot
A Japanese ghost story in the neo-realist style where a wife and her lover conspire to kill her husband and then dump his body down a well only for him to return to them as a ghost
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
A Japanese horror film that winds a convoluted plot involving stolen corpses, a blackmarket in organ harvesting, split personality, twins and religious cults
Charming anime from Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro about a young girl adopted into a witch’s strange household. The occasion where Studio Ghibli made the switch over to computer animation
Peculiar but very nicely made anime about a group of children who go on a fantastical journey in an abandoned apartment building that is washed away to sea
It is some surprise that Akira Kurosawa’s only full venture into fantastic cinema was with his penultimate film here. A beautifully filmed anthology of eight tales, including several ghost stories and two anti-nuclear parables
Not an adaptation of Bram Stoker but an anime based on the Marvel comic-book Tomb of Dracula (the same title that gave birth to Blade)
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
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
A bizarre and entirely incomprehensible Japanese urban fantasy. I reached the end with no idea what this film’s string of strange happenings was about at all
One of the overlooked Japanese monster movies directed by Godzilla’s creator Ishiro Honda concerning a giant alien blob that appears in the sky and sucks up coal and diamonds
Extraordinary anime where the members of an after school club secretly harbour great powers. From there, this expands out with reality-bending scope
The first film from Mamoru Hosoda based on a tv series that was a blatant attempt to copy the Pokemon phenomenon and concerning cute creatures that live on the internet
The 20th Toho monster movie where the studio decided to gather Godzilla and all the other monsters under their roof together for a massive tag team brawl. Disappointingly, the monsters are upstaged by space opera elements for long sections
Forgotten Japanese film about a man searching for a friend finding a village where a bell must be struck to prevents creatures escaping from a pond. Beautiful, bizarre and quite unlike any fantasy film you have seen before
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
The second of the Japanese Death Note films, released almost back-to-back with the first. This is an even better film than its predecessor, delighting in the twists and turns in the games as Light and his nemesis L outwit each other
Uniquely original Japanese horror film adapted from a manga concerning a book that kills anyone whose name is written in it. This has spawned several sequels and an American remake. The show is stolen by the supremely weird Kenichi Matsuyama
Completely insane Japanese film about man-eating killer sushi. A film that has an anything goes lunacy, resulting in some of the most surreally crazed monster scenes this author has seen in some time
The third of Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy. While the previous entries are Yakuza films, this is an action film about androids set in Blade Runner-homaging Cyberpunk future
Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive was a Yakuza film with a gonzo ending. In this sequel, Miike brings back the same two actors and makes it ALL gonzo
A Yakuza film from Takashi Miike filled with ultra-violence and casual perversity before Miike goes nuts in a totally gonzo ending. Two unrelated sequels followed from Miike
The Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film is a genre filled with gore, madcap combat moves, bizarre bio-mechanoid transformations. This concerns itself with a game of baseball that has become a blood-drenched combat sport
Anime where a mysterious other-dimensional stranger aids future rebels. This has a wonderfully ornate Gothic feel but an entirely confusing plot
Hideo Nakata made the highly influential Ringu but his other films have been uneven. This ghost story is one of his few follow-ups that comes near recapturing the same uncanny mood
A Japanese romantic comedy about a lonely nerd who falls in love with a cyborg girl that has time travelled back from the future
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
Japanese remake of the Vincenzo Natali film where a group of people wake up in mysterious labyrinth of identical cubed rooms filled with death traps
Japanese director Shusuke Kaneko turns his attention to the pyrokinesis theme. Thanks to Kaneko’s expertise with effects, this becomes the best film on the firestarter theme yet
The feature film spinoff of a cult anime tv series
Hideo Nakata will always be known as the director of the original Ring. Here he revisits the kaidan eiga in the story of a haunted apartment but the show falls apart after a confusing Sixth Sense-type twist mid-film
From cult director Shion Sono, a typically bizarre and gore-drenched Japanese black comedy about tropical fish salesmen, serial killings and the reclamation of traditional male pride
Bizarre Japanese copy of Battle Royale by way of American Idol where a group of schoolgirls from a singing competition are trapped on an island where they must play a deadly card game
Makoto Shinkai conducts a flawless capturing of Hiyao Miyazaki’s style – the clean simplicity of the animation, reverence for nature, the tender intimacy of the characters – in this beautifully animated work about the discovery of an underground realm
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
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
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
J-horror film based on the Japanese urban legend of a boogeywoman with a face slit from ear to ear who appears to kill people
Obscure Japanese film set in a computer-controlled dystopia where a simple bus driver makes a defiant stand against against conformity
Shinya Tsukamoto of Tetsuo: The Iron Man fame turns his fascination with repressions to the story of a salaryman (played by himself) who deals with his girlfriend’s death by obsessively trying to obtain a gun
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
Anime in which Tokyo is covered by a mysterious energy bubble of alien origin and of a group of defiant youths who live on in its midst until the appearance of a mystery girl
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
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
Epic and beautifully animated anime set largely underwater about the struggle to save a dying Earth from an evil super-computer that wants eradicate humanity
Another of the gonzo Japanese splatter films about a schoolgirl who tries to go about her schoolday while fighting off mutant cyborgs with the chainsaw she carries
Stunning Mamoru Oshii-prodcued anime short about a vampire girl who operates as an American agent eliminating vampires in post-War Japan
The live-action adaptation of a manga about a teenager who inherits the powers of Soul Reaper and is thrust into a battle against monstrous supernatural entities
Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the adaptation of a manga about an immortal samurai. Miike bookends the film with awesome sequences with his hero battling hundreds of opponents but the film in between drags
An early Takashi Miike film that forsakes his usual ultra-violence and surreal weirdness for a genteel road movie through backwater China to the discovery of a lost culture
Strippers and zombies Japanese style. An entry into the Gonzo Japanese Splatter film fad. Cheaply made, with surprisingly little nudity and a whole lot of tongue-in-cheek splatter
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
This is one of Takashi Miike’s most incomprehensible films – what appears to be a murder mystery and gay love story set in a prison, along with random SF elements
A beautiful anime from Momoru Hosoda that retells Beauty and the Beast and spins it in SF terms as tale about a girl who finds fame as a singer in Virtual Reality
Osama Tezuka is a cult figure in anime and manga – what is less well known is that he also made adult animation. This, about a woman’s temptation by The Devil in mediaeval France, is a mind-boggling array of psychedelia and eroticism
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
Japanese film clearly inspired by Battle Royale that has a wonderfully appealing premise where a high school baseball game that has been turned into a deathsport
This was the sequel to Battle Royale and ups the scale of the conflict but somewhere loses the gleeful fun of the original and strays off to become a war film
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
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
Godzilla director Ishiro Honda makes a colourfully entertaining space opera about Earth’s battle to fight off an alien invasion force on The Moon
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
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
Visually stunning live-action film from Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell, set in the beautifully stylised faded sepia tone world of a Virtual Reality game
Baffling and incomprehensible Japanese SF film about a catastrophe that is causing people to turn to stone
The film that made the world pay attention to Takashi Miike. Starting out as a seeming love story, this culminates in some of the most brutal and hard-to-watch torture scenes ever committed to film
Sequel the demented Attack of Titan with its wild images of humanity under attack from mindless giants that bite their heads off, which was shot back-to-back and released a few months later
The live-action adaptation of a popular manga series, this comes with a completely WTF premise about humanity defending itself from an invasion by a horde of misshapen giants that like to bite people’s heads off
The fifth of the Gamera films, Japanese monster movies that are made for children. This abandons the relative realism of the earlier films for a colourful silliness with frequently lunatic results
You feel that a film about lesbian Japanese schoolgirls vs zombies should have been more interesting. The zombies barely mount to a dozen and the director seems more preoccupied by his softcore predilections
Ishiro Honda, the director of Godzilla, makes a colourful dventure film about a super-submarine battling an undersea empire in the vein of other works of the era like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
The US release of several short Japanese films featuring the superhero Starman. Cheap and entertainingly absurd, filled with tatty superheroics and laughable science
Disappointing live-action film from anime director Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, construed as nothing beyond a live-action videogame with kick-ass girls engaged in serial combat encounters
Studio Ghibli tackle Mary Norton’s classic books about a miniature family that live inside the walls of a house. Norton’s essential Englishness translates surprisingly well to anime and the results are quite magical
An action film that takes place in a single room. A samurai is invited to dine by a mysterious host who reveals he is an immortal monster and believes they have been destined to fight
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
Shinji Aramaki returns to the Appleseed franchise for a third time with this prequel. Though it abandons the Cyberpunk milieu, Aramaki crafts action scenes with a stunning realism
A dazzling reboot of the earlier manga/anime made with stunning photorealistic animation design and breathtaking action scenes that made this a benchmark for modern anime. Sequels followed.
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.
Another J-horror on the bandwagon created by the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudge films. Some promisingly initial scares traipse off into a dull mystery about investigating the past
Sweet and tender anime about a young girl who has a curse placed on her that causes her to lose her voice and how this actually allows everyone around her to voice things they don’t say.
One of the earliest works of anime director Mamoru Oshii, later famous for Ghost in the Shell. This is a plotless, almost dialogueless work about a young girl journeying across a strange planet that is more surrealism than SF
A Japanese variation on The Silence of the Lambs that is one of the better copies. Made with a cool, composed fascination and some original twists
An early Takashi Miike film where a teenage girl is killed and her personality uploaded to the internet, having been conveniently backed up by her father on three cd roms!
Anime version of the classic tale Chinese legend Journey to the West made Osamu Tezuka, this comes with a fast-paced action and is undeniably likable
The film that created the cult of anime in the West. Essentially a Cyberpunk version of The Fury, this has been construed as a series of climaxes that get progressively larger in scale until they almost reach a point of sensory overload