ZombieDog’s rating: The cure for zombie-itis

ZombieDog’s review: B-movies are a gateway drug. The love of both B-movies and cult movies is in my opinion a more complicated love than just liking movies. Each type of movie offers the viewer a unique experience in the sense that what you’re seeing is not mainstream and most likely subversive and deviant. Love of B-movies will send you on great adventures searching for that next B-movie experience and no matter where they are, down alleys, up trees — or even in Japan. The true lover of these types of movies will leave no stone unturned.

Tokyo Zombie is unique Japanese take on the stoner comedy (without marijuana of course, because in Japan it is very illegal) with dark humor. Adapted from a comic book written in 1999, this movie has a really strong 1980s-made-with-a-video-camera-in-college type of feel. It stars Tadanobu Asano (47 Ronin with Keanu Reeves) and Shô Aikawa (Gozu, Zebraman), both accomplished actors and have been in films in both United States and Japan. The director Sakichi Sato hit the cult gold right out of the gate with Ichi the Killer And a few years later Gozu, which caught the attention of Quentin Tarantino who asked him to direct segments of Kill Bill Vol 1 and Vol 2.

The film starts off with Fujio (Asano) and Mitsuo (Aikawa) working in a fire extinguisher factory. They’re not really working though; they are kind of just messing around and wrestling. Fujio and Mitsuo are a solid mix between Crosby and Hope with some Cheech and Chong mixed in. As they’re messing around, the boss confronts both of them and forces Mitsuo to roll up in a mat so he can smack him to humiliate him even further. Fujio doesn’t appreciate this, though, and grabs an empty fire extinguisher and smacks the boss in the back of his head, killing him. This right here sets the exact tone of the movie. These two don’t care.

Well, they do care enough to take the body and dump it into a pile of garbage, which is really where this movie begins. See, Tokyo has gotten so dirty that people started piling up garbage in the center of town until it was a giant mountain called “Black Fuji.” It grows so high so that the top becomes snowcapped. The pile of garbage has been there long enough that it starts to affect the culture, and those in touch with the “spirit world” claim that the place is haunted and filled with evil demons. The psychics must be onto something, because it isn’t long after that the zombies start showing up.

Back at work the next day, still goofing around, Fujio and Mitsuo casually notice a large group of zombies headed in their direction. They are the slow-mving Romero zombies, so they have time to react — and react they do by wrestling with them until they got bored, after which they go to the store to get snacks.

Tokyo Zombie has a lot of similarities to Shaun of the Dead (which came out a year before). Both the tone and storyline are almost beat-for-beat with slight variations. But as this is from a Manga comic, it’s almost like a chicken-and-egg-type situation. Dark comedies are rare enough that I’m willing to forgive almost anything.

The one thing is that you must go into this movie with your eyes wide open and understand Japanese movies are “different.” This isn’t to say that they’re better or worse; they are just different to the degree that you will notice. On the surface Japanese culture is a conformist culture and even more than that a conservative quiet culture. These movies are anything but. I would say their movies are highly conceptual however, that doesn’t even do it justice. If you explore Japanese cinema in anything other than Godzilla, you will discover this almost immediately.

This movie does play out as you would expect, in that one of the duo gets infected with the zombie-itis. As we progress, Tokyo decays even further and devolves into a Battle Beyond Thunder Dome. When it shifts into the dramatic, I had a problem. If you are going to do a dark comedy, then you have to keep that style. Any time you go swap drama, comedy, action, or adventure, you weaken the movie. I think this is more the case with dark comedies because it requires a little bit of bravery to follow through with having a sense of humor on what would otherwise be horror or high-level drama.

In the end though, this is a fun little zombie movie. And it does ask a serious question, “Can you be turned into a zombie if the zombie that bites you has false teeth?” If you do watch it though, go into this movie with an open mind. Almost all Japanese movies tend to be a bit weird, except for Godzilla. They are absolutely aware the world watches Godzilla and they tone it down. The fun thing is almost every culture has a take on zombies and the Japanese are no different.

Quick picks:

• Gozu (2003)
• Ichi the Killer (2001)
• Yakuza apocalypse (2015)