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A friend of mine taught English in Japan for a couple of years and she told me something about Japanese film that has helped me immensely: In North America, we celebrate individuality. We WANT everyone to get something different from a movie or a book or a television show, which is why everything that needs to be explained IS completely explained. In Japan, they focus more on the collective than on the individual, which means that when you’re in school in addition to learning math and reading, you’re also learning how to be Japanese. For the purposes of film and television, this means that there is a certain level of explanation that will never occur leaving North American viewers a little lost occasionally. People who know me tire of hearing this explanation, but it’s the only thing that allows me to be able to watch Japanese film (most of which is excellent) without being completely lost. I’ll be honest though…. I don’t even know if this movie’s intended audience knows what this movie is about, Japanese or not.

By way of plot, there’s not much. The Tokyo police have been privatized and are now run as a corporation. This has happened to the army as well. A new breed of criminal has arrived, called Engineers who, when wounded, grow new grotesque appendages, occasionally grafting machinery or other objects into the new growth. They can be identified by a ‘key’ shaped tumor in their heads, which must be destroyed in order to kill them. Ruka, a young police woman, is an ‘engineer hunter’ whose father was murdered when she was young. That’s pretty much it. That and more stage blood than I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

I’ll be honest that I’m not sure if I like this movie or not. It certainly is fun and the production values are excellent but…. I mean….. what the f*ck? Between the blood, the man with the pipes in his eyes, the penis cannon and the girl with the teeth in her breasts, I just didn’t know what to think. My mouth was hanging open in shock for most of the movie… except when I was laughing or cheering. I recommend this movie if you are a fan of the over the top gore genre (if there even is one). It’s not sadistic or cruel (like Saw); it’s not intended to create a visceral reaction, but it certainly is a very good time.

I’m linking to the 5 minute trailer that Twitch has up here. (Five minutes of madness is the BEST, possibly the ONLY, way to describe this.) This is the kind of movie I can’t recommend everyone see because it’s simply not FOR everyone, and the filmmakers didn’t intend it to be. I had the pleasure of seeing it with a crowd who ate it up, cheered and took great delight in every moment of blood-soaked insanity, but if you were watching at home, you might have a different take. I’d be very interested in your observations. Don’t hesitate to email me or post in the comments section. I hope if you do see, you enjoy.