Higanjima: Escape from Vampire Island

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

"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.

If that particular thing is your thing, you will rate it higher.

If it is not, you will be underwhelmed as it caters to the tropes and conventions of Japanese comic books.

I found the villain outright ridiculous in a laughably bad way. Too many of the other characters are irritating too - just slightly less so. Like the whiny kid in the letterman jacket and the other two who seemed to find plenty of hair product while playing Japanese Undead Survivor.

Oh, and I wasn't impressed by the CGI either.

Even the action seemed mostly dull.

Also things are left unexplained. Like why the big guy was sometimes chained up in the village of the resistance.

I did like the heavy metal score though. And forklift lady.

It took me several years to finally clear this off my playlist. It was that little of a priority to watch. Finishing it just proved so.

Doesn't it just annoy you when an at first promising film slowly slips in the wrong direction? This one starts out with a swordsman dressed up heavily in some waterproof clothes taking on an onslaught of vampires whom are wearing old fashioned Japanese attire. We then skip to Japan where we meet a group of friends. It's witty, well shot, the acting is great and there are a lot of unanswered questions; it breaks out like a good action horror movie. It also wouldn't be a stretch to say it carried shades of another well known J-horror, Battle Royale. It has that same camaraderie and wit, with subtle moments of horror, but at the same time being very down to earth. It slowly begins to slip though. The brother of the swordsman is amongst this group that we met, and they all go to find and help him. After much melodrama and annoyingly overacted teen angst, after meeting some strange women whom tells them of a situation involving vampires on her home island, it all begins to get a bit grating as we are hammered with ridiculously over the top nonsense.

It was still promising though. It was still fun. Then we get to the island. Every bit of wit and good dark horror seemed to have been swapped in favour of pure overkill in the melodrama and overkill in trying to build the characters in particular of the main vampire. It's what I call too much talk not enough action; anyone who has seen some of the modern shounen anime such as Bleach will understand. Big bad guy is insurmountable. Big bad guy has 300 attempts to wipe out our protagonists. Big bad guy spends those 300 spots fitting in his little quips, going on about something to do with why he's so special, and how he's unbeatable. Put that together with the fact that the main vampire is the most androgynous and strangely attired bad guy I've ever seen, and put together all of these overkilled overly melodramatic moments, and its momentum slowly dripped away. Still good mindless fun, but it could, and should have been more.