Higanjima

"Higanjima" is not a great movie by any means, but it is quite entertaining and offers almost two hours of fun.

The story is simple enough. Hideo Ishiguro's Akira is a high school student that has his group of friends and a regular life. The only bitter point is the death/disappearance of his older brother a few years ago. But then, one day, when he is running away from some bullies, he meets a mysterious woman that tells him his brother is still alive, in a out-of-the-maps island... full of vampires. Will Akira believe her and decide to go the island with her, or will he decide that she is just crazy and a liar?

From that moment on the movie offers a nice mixture of horror, action and humor. It never raises the bar too high, and some of the acting is a little bit shaky (good enough, though, in general), but it keeps the action going. The plot is simple, but the characters, even if caricatures, are well developed and the actors made them interesting and charismatic. The CGI is meh, but it is not really important.

Too bad that it becomes a little bit repetitive and overlong, and that some moments could have been greatly improved if they had tried just a little bit. Otherwise, a trip to "Higanjima" is absolutely worth it.

Wow, Higanjima if considered a horror movie is a total fail (except for he fun head smashing opening scene). If taken as a comedy this movie is pure genius... you get some of the funniest over-acting, staged shots of the coolest nerd-losers in movie history, some of the gayest smart-ass vampires, some of the most annoying screechy ghost grannies, the Korean version of Harry Potter as a sidekick funnier than even the cliché fat dumb funny guy.... and don't even start with the "cool" main characters. Akira is the handsome nice guy who tends to sit down for misplaced scenes of unfitting sadness and staring at the horizon, his brother is some kind of a nerd who watched too many Rambo movies and decided killing vampires is fun and makes you look cool and then there is a cool rocker dude (love the staged scenes with the baseball bat) who seems to have been snatched from a bad 70ies rock gang movie. He tends to appear more retarded than the obviously retarded Pong character.

Anyway... that gang of idiots for unexplainable stupid reasons heads of to retardation island Higanjima where they fight a bunch of vampires, exploding winged vampire sluts, cheap CGI dragon-meets-Giger-style-Alien monsters and zombie degenerates like the kick ass brain dead "Reaggae" zombie who is by far the funniest. The whole movie doesn't make an inch of sense and the random editing adds to the ridiculous funny bone of Higanjima, mixing shaky cam fight sequences that are barely watchable without throwing up with endless shots of Akira sitting on a wall and being sad for 20 minutes or having some romantic puppy-flashbacks before turning into a bloodthirsty fighting machine that splits flying leaves in slow motion.

The fight sequences are always accompanied by misplaced epic heavy rock music and tend to recycle the basic ideas of smashing heads, chopping off arms or driving swords through hollow vampire-zombie heads in a repetitive fashion. They really just had these 3 ideas, so even a massive monster dragon has to have his head smashed first and then stabbed just to make sure its really dead. Of course this movie is 2 hours long to elaborate on the exquisite plot and thrilling fight sequences. On higanjima heroes die slowly so they can scream the names of their loved ones for minutes even after having a samurai sword driven through their nerd-brains.

The director is either a total comedy genius or a lobotomy patient... anyway, put on your diapers when watching this.

A clutch of aimless teens from the city are unconvincingly convinced to join a suspicious seeming woman on her journey to Higanjima island, where the brother of main teen Akira apparently resides in secret after having gone missing for many years. Upon arrival at the spooky island, the teens are quickly overrun by a large contingent of pasty faced vampires. They are rescued by the brother who is now a seemingly indestructible vampire hunter. Despite some unintentionally funny dialog and situations, this is a decent chase movie where Akira must eventually join his brother in battle against the vampire leader and his minions, including an impressive flying vampire dragon that snatches people off the ground from time to time. The vampires are creepy, especially the white-haired leader (well played by Kôji Yamamoto), and Miori Takimoto registers well as Akira's potential romantic interest. The rest of the acting could charitably be called highly variable. Some of the CGI horrors are likewise among the less successful aspects of this well produced Japanese scare flick.

Higanjima otherwise known as Vampire Island was a recommendation and not something I'd ever heard of. It was an absolute beast to find an English subtitled copy of but I'm very happy I managed it.

It tells the story of a young man who learns that his missing brother is on a mysterious island that has been taken over by vampires. With friends in tow he sets off to find his brother and combat the undead force.

Japanese made with a little help from South Korean production Higanjima has plenty of the usual over the top Japanese tropes and is all the better for it. Very gory, action packed and perfectly paced it exceeded all expectations that I had.

On the flipside the lack of budget shows in places, when CGI is required it really looks quite bad. The movie is also oddly a bit camp, I'm not sure why that approach was used and our vampires look like extras from Big Trouble In Little China (1986).

Despite its flaws Higanjima is a lot of fun and though I'd argue against it entirely being classed as a horror its certainly something I'd have liked to see more of. It could have easily been turned into a television series and one that I really would have watched.

Silly violent fun.

The Good:

Some great moments

Looks the part

Very well constructed

The Bad:

Some ropey cgi

Some unanswered questions

The vampires could have looked a tad better

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Banishing vampires is as easy as locking them in a cupboard

Pong was right, they were terrible friends

I found "Higanjima: Escape From Vampire Island" to be a rather entertaining movie. And as for an Asian vampire movie, it was a nice change to see it not being those hopping vampires. I assume that being credited to this being a Japanese vampire movie, and not a Chinese.

The story in "Higanjima: Escape From Vampire Island" is about a group of young people being brought out to a mysterious island that isn't on any maps, where they are looking for Atsushi, Akira's brother who has been missing for two years. Something is very wrong on the island, however, and the young people soon find themselves surrounded by vampires. The entire island is controlled by Miyabi, the master vampire. Will the group be able to slay Miyabi and make it off the island alive?

Actually the storyline is a bit 'mainstream' and borrowing from various movies, so it doesn't really offer all that much new and innovating material. But still, it worked out well enough, because the storyline is well accompanied by lots of action, thrills and good acting.

Not being familiar with the Manga upon which this movie is based, I have no idea how true (or not) the movie is to the Manga. So I watched the movie without any prior information about it and without having been influenced by the Manga. I found "Higanjima: Escape From Vampire Island" to be fun and overall exciting. The fight scenes were well choreographed and the characters were nice and well cut out.

So if you like Japanese cinema and enjoy vampire movies (where vampires don't have sparkly skin, big hair, and are romanticized) then you should give "Higanjima: Escape From Vampire Island" a chance.