HIRUKO THE GOBLIN (1991)
With its clean synthesized music and its sentimental moments, is this really another Shinya Tsukamoto movie? Composer Chu Ishikawa is absent and a company called Makotoya gets top billing over the director’s own Kaiju Theatre label. It’s more pedestrian than anything he had worked on at this early career stage, perhaps as it’s a manga adaptation. Prior to this Tsukamoto had given high-school fantasy a shot with his experimental film The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo. But for whatever reason this often feels more like a ‘for hire’ project rather than something with that same kind of frenzied momentum. The story of a successful artist being lured into a deal with a studio is an old one. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t enjoyable moments in what is essentially a tale of a mad scientist and a teenager fighting evil. But does it have any sort of creative edge?
HCF Review - Seeing Double
KOTOKO (2011)
As the title character arrives with a lot of discordant classroom instruments, a few dance moves, and some screaming, it seems clear that this isn’t just another Tsukamoto movie. Even if the man himself is in the film and like Gemini the top billed cast also includes a music star. There’s also another descent into madness (or hell) and another painful relationship like the ones his earlier features. However, as things unfold this becomes the director at his most atypical, without the technological metaphors or even the Chu Ishikawa tunes. These kind of stylish touches would only serve to make this less disturbing. Here the nightmare happens in broad daylight and seems like a documentary, complete with a narrator, about the life of someone trapped by problems conjured up by their own mind. Any moments of dark comedy or fantasy are fleeting in a story that is more an endurance test than a macabre thriller.
HCF Review - Twins
GEMINI (1999)
Rats, maggots, disease, unsettling sounds courtesy of Chu Ishikawa… it must be another Shinya Tsukamoto movie. A period drama might not be the kind of project anyone would be expecting from the director who, at the time, was mainly known for stop motion effects and industrial locations. But this blend of Meiji Era fashion and existential dread isn’t exactly typical fare. The eyebrows and the hairdos are certainly a fascinating choice. In some ways there are familiar ingredients involved as this is a tale of good and evil twins; and a story about a wealthy and a poor man who look alike. This is also based on a short story from the same time period rather than being a bizarre original script. But while archetypal characters and familiar narrative beats are used there are many strange moments waiting to creep out of the shadows.
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