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Fantasia Reviews – Films from Asia & Australia

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Tuesday, 21 July 2009 10:37

Today, we look at some the fine offerings from the Far East that have come to Fantasia 2009. Films from Japan and South Korea are usually well represented at Fantasia, and so it was again for this year’s addition of the festival. Not to be outdone, Australia sent along one of the most brutal revenge movies I’ve ever seen, but for more information on all these films, simply scroll below.

Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl

Tokyo Gore Police was one of the little gems of last year’s Fantasia; what exactly it was about is still a matter of some contention in my own thoughts, but hey, it had enough blood for all the Jasons, Freddys, and Michaels combined and have enough left over to transfuse half the population of Montreal. Not to be outdone, director Yoshihiro Nishimura outdid himself with Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl, which is little more than an Archies-style high school rom com… That is if Betty were a vampire and Veronica was the daughter of a mad scientist who uses her death to further his experiments in creating life. And, oh yes, there’s lots and lots and lots of blood.

Unfailingly cartoonish, albeit in the best possible way, Vampire Girl has a leg up on Tokyo Gore Police by making things simple and embracing a universal theme we can all appreciate: high school girls are evil, and never more so to each other. Yukie Kawamura is wonderfully sweet and occasionally vicious as Monami, the new girl in school. Secretly though, she’s a vampire and as Japanese tradition dictates, she gives a chocolate to her intended, Mizushima (Takumi Saitô) though it’s a chocolate imbued with her own vampire blood. But Mizushima already has a girlfriend, Keiko played by Eri Otoguro, who brilliantly plays the high school bad girl clichés: she’s shrill, bratty and obnoxious. Saitô, though he looks like the Japanese equivalent of a Jonas Brother is also a winner, playing Mizushima with a charming befuddlement.

The real star though is Nishimura’s outrageous splatter effects. In the first five minutes Monami peels the skin of the face of one of Keiko’s Frankenstein henchwomen like a horrific Fruit Roll-Up and then uses the skull of one to knock the head off of another. And then when he’s not trying to gross you out with how much blood he can spill on a per minute basis, Nishimura tries to offend like really in a go for broke standard onlu used by those modern filmmakers desperate to offend: black face. Yes, you heard that right, there’s Japanese black face in Vampire Girl and Frankenstein Girl. The worst part though is that you’re really not offended. The film is so over the top that to take with any degree of real world seriousness would be like bemoaning the physics of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

The Chaser

Coming out of South Korea is The Chaser, a film from first time director Na Hong-jin, who has noble picked up the sword of Korea’s new wave movement as many of the provocateurs that developed the form have now moved on to more Hollywood fair. The Chaser is a mix of chaotic action, serial killer chills and police drama. The film stars Kim Yun-seok as Jung-ho, a cop turned pimp who’s noticed that his girls keep disappearing on him. A near cosmic twist of fate brings him to the reason why, as he accidentally hits the getaway car of Young-min (Ha Jung-woo), a serial killer that’s been brutally torturing and murdering prostitutes, though Jung-ho initial believes he’s simply capturing them and selling them as sex slaves.

Na Hong-jin deftly combines nail-biting chases with scenes of tremendous dramatic tension as Jung-ho tries to navigate the red taped-off world he became disillusioned with in order to save Mi-jin (Seo Yeong-hie), one of his ladies of the evening. Racked with guilt having sent Mi-jin in as a Trojan Horse to lead him to the man he believes is selling his prostitutes, Jung-ho forms a bond with Mi-jin’s seven-year-old daughter. Kim Yun-seok shows a marvelous world-weariness in his character that’s kind of Bogart as the urban anti-hero. Na Hong-jin keeps the pace of the film even, never giving the audience too much of one thing at a time, and always keeping them guessing as to the end result. It probably could have stood some more prudish editing, but overall The Chaser is very satisfying as a modern Korean film noir.

Evangelion 1.0

The anime film Evangelion 1.0 demonstrates that not even Japan’s film industry is immune to remakes of past successes. I’m not sure how this Evangelion stacks up against past offerings, but I know it’s the typical anime mash-up of giant robots, alien invaders and occult lore referencing. Still, it’s exceedingly well made, features some tight action and has a real emotional drive at the centre, and all this ends up in a cliffhanger to be concluded in the three sequels that followed. (Evangelion 1.0 was released in 2007 in Japan.)

At the heart of the story is Shinji Ikari, a boy rescued in the midst of a military fight against a giant alien invader on the city of Tokyo-3. Shinji Ikari thinks that he’s being taken to his father for safety, but at the secret base of NERV he discovers that he’s actually being recruited to pilot a giant robot weapon thingamajig and that his father’s as cold and distant as ever. Shinji Ikari instead ends up forming a bond with Lt. Col. Misato Katsuragi, one of the officers overseeing the military operation against the invading so-called “Angels.” (Don’t ask.) This parental abandonment and exploitation angle really spoke to me and got me invested in the story. I’m by no means your average anime consumer, but this one reached me and got me engaged. So why did they end on a freakin’ cliffhanger?!

The Horseman

In the 1970s, Charles Bronson got audiences cheering for him with his bloody revenge quest picture Death Wish and its sequels, as vigilante justice was kind of a cinematic trend in post Vietnam/post-Watergate cinema. Then Bernhard Goetz took a subway ride with a gun and waited for hoodlums to start something, and well, let’s say that took some steam out of the thing. Well no such troubling conscience exists with the Australian film The Horseman, a go-for-broke revenge thriller that had the audience cheering and jeering with every onscreen kill and act of torture.

Christian Forteski (Peter Marshall) is a professional exterminator of the bug variety, but the rape and murder of his daughter disguised as a drug overdose puts this normally quiet, working class man over the edge of rage and desperation as her pursues the lowlifes that took his daughter, brutalized her and filmed the whole thing for later sale as a mail order porno. In many scenes, The Horseman is a visceral and cold-blooded revenge factory where Christian uses a full handyman’s garage itinerary of ad hoc torture implements to find the scummiest of the scum. The film’s first responsibility is to thrill you as these guys get exactly what they deserve at the end of fish hooks, pipeworks and fast drying sealant (you don’t want to know where he sticks it).

While being a callous purveyor of brutal and bloody revenge, The Horseman is doing what it does best, and it does it very well. It tries to balance that with moments of shame and conflict as Christian remembers his daughter as a child or considers for a moment where this path is leading him personally and spiritually. Marshall does a lot to play up those scenes with body language and facial expressions, you can sense the conflict, but I don’t feel that the filmmakers really exploit that as fully as they might have thought they were. The addition of teen runaway that Christian assists was played well by the actors, but those scenes felt almost tacked on amidst the other brutality, and just to create some further dramatic tension in the film’s climax.

But all-in-all, Director Steven Kastrissios’ dedication to his vision and Marshall’s professional chops sell the view on the revenge quest, and being by the right crowd, this is a movie that can capture the imagination of the audience in a great way. It tries to be conflicted about the maliciousness visited upon these dastardly characters and while I don’t think it achieves the balance it thinks it does, it’s the thought that counts.