Jigoku kozô

This movie is the worst movie i have seen in my whole life.

It have nothing to save, all is bad, the actors and the acting is comical, the make up sucks, the plot is totally predictable...nothing can be saved.

At least, the suffering ends after only 45 minutes, and seems that the director and the rest of the crew don't take the movie seriously.

I read somewhere that this movie is the first part of a hexalogy based in Hideshi Hino's tales...i hope the rest of the movies will be better...because if the are worst than this, this will be without a doubt the worst saga of horror films.

Ultra low-budget and very short film that kind of worked, I think? I was a bit zonked out while watching it and was in the need of something short and simple. I'm not sure if how I felt led The Boy from Hell to feel like a fever dream. Maybe this is just the right way to watch something like this.

It's a little gory and it's got a bit of body horror, but it never commits enough to be too horrific. I guess it also deals with a family tragedy that plays out like the one seen near the start of 2018's Hereditary. I've got you, Ari Aster, taking ideas from then-14-year-old obscure Japanese horror movies that aren't short films but aren't long enough to be features exactly! You will pay for your crimes (jokes, no one has a patent on people's heads getting knocked off while sticking them out of moving vehicles).

The Boy from Hell is bizarre but it is about a boy who dies and then goes to hell and then he kind of comes back so I got what I was after, based on that title. It's low-grade in a sort of charming way, and has some dark fun for just under an hour and then ends. Maybe they were going for something a bit deeper and it didn't register, but that's okay. I kind of liked what I thought this was. What my sleepy, still-recovering-from-a-mild-cold body/mind thought it was.

THE BOY FROM HELL is the best cinematic representation of legendary Japanese manga artist Hideshi Hino's overall visual and storytelling style so far, even beating out 1988's MERMAID IN A MANHOLE, which was directed by Hino himself. While other entries into the HIDESHI HINO HORROR THEATER hexalogy of short films may be better films when viewed out of context, THE BOY FROM HELL stands as the single best adaptation in the series.

A theme that is almost always present in Hino's manga work is the isolation and suffering of the outsider, the freak. There is a brilliant scene in THE BOY FROM HELL where the titular resurrected monster happens upon a group of children playing ball. When he approaches them, wanting to join in, the run away screaming. Despite the grisly murders Daio has committed up to this point, you still feel sorry for him in that scene.

Another thing that director Mari Asato and screenwriter Seiji Tanigawa (working from Hino's eponymous manga) nailed perfectly is the mix of grotesque horror imagery and gore with pitch black comedy that permeates so many of Hino's comics. The most wonderful examples of this are the ridiculous fake nose they put on the detective and a birthday party for Daio, during which he is forced to wear a mask similar to that of Hannibal Lecter in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS to keep from from devouring the other little kids. Of course that doesn't work so well in the end ...

I hesitate to recommend THE BOY FROM HELL to the casual horror fan or even fans of Japanese horror. It is wildly different from the slow paced malevolent hair-ghost stories of recent years and hearkens closer to the ero-guro films of the 70ies, while also adding plenty of elements from campy fun splatter movies of the 1980ies. If you like those and/or are already familiar with Hino's manga publications (a fair number of which are available in English translations) then this is a movie you should seek out. Everyone else may come away confused and maybe disappointed.

A doctor tragically loses her son in a car accident (quite graphically). A random old woman appears telling the mother she can bring her son back if she kills a boy the same age with a special tusk. She does so (again, quite graphically) and her son returns, but not as the boy he once was, but as a hideous monster who craves human flesh. She keeps him locked up in a cage and tries to find a way to heal him but he escapes and starts slaughtering anyone in his path. It's not long before a detective with a huge nose and violently loud sneezes is hot on their trail.

It's makes even less sense than it sounds like believe it or not, but by gawd is it entertaining. The charmingly cheap green screen effects are immediately striking. Then there's the surprisingly graphic deaths of children. Not since Beware! Children At Play have I seen so many gory child deaths depicted in such an unflinching manner. Then, there's the centerpiece of the movie - a jaw-dropping dream(?) sequence where the titular Boy from Hell goes "home" and wreaks even greater havoc. This sequence then returns later on for an even stranger climax.

This is the first film I've seen from Hideshi Hino's Theater of Horror series. Every other movie in this series sounds interesting to say the least (one of them is called Lizard Baby, another is about zombie dolls) so best believe I'll be giving them a watch.

Boy From Hell is a live action adaptation of the manga of the same name. Daio (the boy) dies from a car accident and his mother brings him back to life. When he rises from the grave he is a deformed child from hell and wrecks havoc in the neighborhood. This film is extremely low budget with bad acting and obvious fake scenery and gore. The idea is good and the manga was probably good as I have not read it but I'm probably thinking the manga was 100% better. This isn't a film necessary for a J-horror fan to watch as it pretty much sucked with all the terrible fake gore and everything.