Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

77th Kill

I am not Gantz-literate. I know nothing about it. I'm guessing it's a manga, I know there have been a few live action films before this one. All I needed was an animated horror film for HoopTober and this was on Netflix so I just pressed play.

So maybe it helps that I had no stake or expectations but I thought this was... pretty awesome? I can get really down on CGI effects too, so it struck me how much better they work when the whole film is CGI - the problem is the seam between live action and CGI, which is effectively animation. That's right, action blockbusters now are inserting cartoons into filmed scenes, and that's why often it doesn't work. But if the whole movie is a cartoon like that, why, then the world is your oyster.

There is only the thinnest of narratives here - honestly, it's considerably less substantial than most actual computer game narratives. In this case, I actually approve of that - all we need are the broadest brushstrokes of a world and its characters. And I'll tell you what - when Yamasaki suggests to Kato that she and her daughter move in with him and his little brother when they get through all this craziness, it struck an unexpected note of authenticity for me. I'm not going to say I loved the characters or was all that emotionally involved, but it just worked for me in that sense.

I fucking LOVED the monsters! They looked like the kind of Japanese folk-terrors you see in period art and wall hangings - that Asian kind of demon who looks like an angry human with disproportionate limbs. We get all sorts of iterations of this kind of thing - apart from a couple of giant minotaur-spiders, the monsters are all based on humanity - my favourite being that giant bouncing head.

This is very much like watching a computer game, so you do need to adjust your expectations. But for what it's going for, it's pretty damn impressive, I think. I had a lot of fun with this.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

Well, of course, after raising the emotional stakes, you just know Yamasaki is going to get in the neck. In this case, in the midriff in a complete body-halving. But this is the most melodramatic bittersweet body-splitting in cinema history, as Kato looks on and we get a procession of mawkish flashbacks of their good times together as her torso spins throught the air in extreme slow motion. I just wish they'd played this song over the montage and it would have been perfect.