Junk Head

Since it took four years to reach Finnish theaters, I'm guessing this is one of those situations where the pandemic just gave new life to a movie which would have otherwise.not received much in the way of distribution.

The setup is that mankind has been immortal for a long time, but at the expense of our capability to reprocreate. When a pandemic starts to kill people en masse, there is a sudden need to replenish the population, so our hero is sent underground, among the marigan to find the one creature they could identify as having genitalia.

The marigan have been living apart from humans for a very long time and have built their society, although many of them are "wild". They don't follow the usual patterns of species, but will instead evolve in wildlly different ways.

This is the world into which our hero is plunged. He loses his body immediately and his head is placed into a robotic body, which brings its own set of difficulties.

The plot is just bad. Things just happen until the movie just ends. It almost feels like the director just didn't have the time or motivation to make the third act for the film.

Despite this, I did enjoy it. The weirdness of the world does carry the film pretty far. The monster design does remind me of something, but I'm not sure of what. Maybe some demonic beings from Hellblazer or something.

The world is claustrophobic and unfamiliar. Dangers seem to lurk everywhere, but at the same time some people have been living there for hundreds of years, so you can apparently get accustomed to it. While the world certainly is artificial, it also seems to grow like some sort of a living being. No-one seems to have any idea about how big it actually is or how things actually work. Certain people just have found themselves working on jobs, even though they might not really know why those jobs are even there.

So, all in all, if you are one of those people who want a cohesive story, this is not for you, but if you visuals and the art of stop-motion animation are your thing, this is worth checking out.

"Junk Head" is a tough movie to describe because it isn't really a movie. It's less a story and more a deep dive into the director's subconscious where weird and disturbing things lurk.

In this sense the film feels a bit like "Eraserhead" in that it's the decidedly odd product of one man's imagination while it also feel reminiscent of "Brazil" - which you could describe in the same terms.

The whole movie takes place in this Escher like subterranean maze of voids, passageways and arching bridges. The inhabitants haven't seen the light of day for many generations to the extent that they are little more than cave fish with legs. At the same time isolation has turned them almost cult-like; not that any of this is explained.

Instead the film is best enjoyed for its dedicated ambition, imaginative delights and conjuring up of a troglodytic realm far removed from us in space and time.

You may well emerge from the darkened cinema blinking and confused but you won't forget that you've experienced something even if you can't quite put your finger on what that something was.

I saw this film a couple of months ago when it came out in theaters, and I must admit it was a pleasant surprise! Though I do have some mixed feelings.

This film is heavily reliant on atmosphere and mood, which the visual do a fantastic job accentuating. However, it's a film that is widely open to interpretation. There is a clear-cut narrative and a solid plot, but there is no conclusive answer to any question the audience might have upon finishing the movie. None of the information revolving around our protagonist can be confirmed, but enough is revealed for us to interpret. That level of uncertainty adds a lot to the atmosphere of the film, along with the mute protagonist, the title, the claustrophobic set - all of it really feels purposeful. The depressing part of that is that you can't confirm if it was purposeful or not, and that only ties with what I believe to be one of the film's themes.

Tackling philosophical ideas doesn't hold the film back from having grain of humor, which - as unexpected and surprising as it was, made the experience more fun. There were a couple of genuine laughs in the theater! And some clever moments that spurred some internal "aah"s.

The lack of comprehensible language doesn't hold back any of the characters from actually having character either. Despite none of the characters speaking a language we can comprehend, there is a lot more character to them than any randy in Final Destination 4. There was a certain segment mid-way into the film that was extremely enjoyable for me to watch and kept me engaged enough to stay with the rest of the film. I hoped for more segments such as that one in the film's remaining runtime, but that was just wishful thinking.

Although my experience was mainly positive, I do have a couple of minor criticisms. The pivotal critique I have with this film is the pacing. There were a couple of moments in the film that failed to keep me invested due to the time they spent on the scene. Looking back, I believe the intension was to build tension, but it was not as effective as I hoped it could be. This enkindled moments where I couldn't tell whether the film was trying to go for "serious" or "comical". Although there were certainly comedic aspects to the film that felt appropriate, some other parts felt a little out of place. There's a constant battle between the shift in mood that left me a little conflicted. If anything, I can praise this film for being bold enough to have its own unique style. Here I am after all, writing a review upon watching this film a couple of months ago because it was just that memorable.

In spite of commending this film for tackling a subjects that appear philosophical, that was also one of my main issues with this film. You can't tell. It's nice to see movies that don't underestimate their audiences, but it's another thing to see a movie where you can't tell if the movie is trying to be simple or deep. I only dismiss the film as "philosophical" because I thought that's what the movie was going for. Now I can't really tell.

Going back to the positives, one of the things about this film that stood out to me was the gradual improvement in animation as the film progressed. You can see director Takehide Hori's improvement as a filmmaker as the narrative flows, and it's quite awe-inspiring when you watch the film for the second time and notice how the clunky the first 15 minutes might be.

Although this movie might not be for everyone, it's a movie that really lets you appreciate the work, effort, and patience this one man put in for 7 years.

While I can imagine some audiences calling this film pretentious, that shouldn't hold you back from actually seeing the movie to find out for yourself. If you go into the film with an open mind, I'm sure you'll be able to come up with your own interpretation. By the end of the film, I'm sure you'd have a new-found admiration for this director.

I personally wish for more people to watch it so I can discuss some of my theories on it. Or I'll wait for a blu-ray release. Everyone coming out of my theater had a pretty positive experience so I hope you can have one too.

From japan. Stop motion animation. In the future, humans have manipulated their genes so heavily, that they have lost the ability to reproduce. So they go study the life forms that can still reproduce. The marigans! In an underground labrynth. It has a sense of humor, where they fight over silly things, and accidentally poke each other with sticks. Two headed monsters that chase him. And poop... or is that vomit ? With huge sex organs. And when someone talks about going on a long and dangerous journey, husband and wife both start giggling... for no reason. This had started as a thirty minute short film released in 2013, and was later made into a full length feature. It starts out very captivating, but the story gets a bit slower later on. Very creative world of various beings, and I love the low, mumbling language they all use. One race morphs into trees. At one point, the kids use his head as a soccer ball. Fun stuff. Observing the various races and discovering what they all do was just as interesting to me as the actual storyline. Written, directed, and voiced by takahide hori. I'm sure that I missed many important parts of the film... i'll definitely need to see this again! The english subtitles are well done. Currently showing on kanopy. Written and directed by takahide hori. Be sure to stick around for the closing credits.. they show the photographer setting up an moving the stop motion sets and figures. So cool!

Heavily, wonderfully influenced by BLAME! (Blam!), by Tsutomu Nihei. Junk Head though, is much more whimsical, and delightful than the nihilism of Blame! (I recommend both). The creature design is fantastical, lighthearted, and at the same time, grotesque, and endearing. The story itself is more a series of set pieces, but that hardly makes it different from most modern movies. Just enjoy the trials, and tribulations of a small cyborg in an utterly unfamiliar world, populated by creative, inventive, scary captivating adversaries, and companions. On a side note, I do highly recommended, Blame!, the manga, and the movie that is based on the Electrofishers chapters of the manga.