Dead Sushi

Astounding is hardly a strong enough word to describe just how truly sublime DEAD SUSHI was...

This was perhaps the most tremendously fun cinematographic experience of my life! I cannot remember laughing as much while pulling my hair and jumping up and down my seat squealing every five seconds to a point where trying to restrain my reactions became impossible! I also never imagined ever feeling so incredibly hungry, sitting on the edge of my seat, holding my breath and literally drooling with my fists both against my chin while looking at a hundred flying zombie sushi famished for something human.

And yes. If you see me walking around, speaking softly to a small omelette sushi safely tucked on my shoulder, fear not! Omelette sushi are the most adorable creatures and they save lives. Yes. They do. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Trying to appease her grandfather, an aspiring sushi chef instead takes a job at a high-class hotel where her attitude about how the preparation differs from her training ends up putting her skills to the test when a curse turns the food against humanity and forces her to save everyone.

This emerges as an incredibly fun and goofy splatter comedy. Among the better qualities of this one is the fact that there's plenty of fun to be with how it tackles the extreme concept. This one gets a lot of mileage out of sushi preparation and the extreme lengths people go to in order to make it servable to others which is an incredibly goofy and silly concept in general. Focusing on her exacting processes and martial arts training is where this one really goes overboard with the silliness. That carries over into the central premise in that this one is trying to sell the idea that reanimated sushi are capable of going on a rampage from a curse and eating people alive. This is such a goofy idea that it becomes a plausible storyline here with the series of outlandish antics that continually arise here. That provides the film with plenty of strong action, from the opening attack on the couple that starts the curse to the first attacks on the staff at the hotel where the reanimated pieces begin flying around grabbing everyone, there's a sense of fine cheese on display that continually appears to be featured in other aspects. The action is utterly enjoyable, from the sushi going wild on the corporate guides flying around the room and slicing up their bodies in reckless abandon to the individual battles against the creatures inside the hotel where the voracious creatures attack or manage to get put down temporarily to the later action of the ravenous swarms appearing as a group to launch their attacks by embedding themselves into different parts of the body make for a lot of fun as well as funny, cheesy goodness. Even the kung-fu scenes look good, and with the enhancement of the giant fish-headed creature coming into play in the final half, it has a lot to enjoy about its action overall. Combined with the silliness of the comedy and plenty of fine gory ideas present throughout here, this one has enough to hold it up over it's few minor flaws. The main issue here is the atrocious CGI that propels this one forward which is just utterly abysmal in how it handles the creatures. There's a plethora of scenes here that play off the swarm of sushi-shaped globs floating around in mid-air attacking the people, and it never looks even remotely believable. The creatures come off as laughable blobs that barely interact with their surroundings only for a series of ridiculous streaks of blood-splatter to come flying out of wounds they supposedly inflict on everyone. Some of the humor might not be for everyone, as there's a wide realm of body humor and silly sight-gags that might not be suitable or appealing for all audiences.

Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Nudity, Graphic Language and sexual acts.

The daughter of a sushi chef, Keiko (Rina Takeda), tries to live up to her father's demanding training in both martial arts and sushi making, but it proves too much for her and she runs away. She finds a job as a waitress at a remote resort hotel that caters to special groups, such as the president and some of his associates running a major pharmaceutical company. Unknown to them, Yamada (Kentaro Simazu), a former researcher at the company who was framed and jailed on trumped-up charges, is living in the area - and he's angry! His research had involved bringing dead things back to life, and he uses his knowledge now to create.... killer sushi! Set loose amongst the guests and workers at the hotel, only Keiko and former sushi chef Mr. Sawada (Shigeru Matsuzaki) have what it takes to fight back, with the help of little dead/alive egg sushi, Eggy, of course....

This is one of those highly entertaining, completely nonsensical and over-the-top gory and funny films that the Japanese seem to have a lock on these days; at one point a character says "this has finally reached a point where it makes no sense any longer" and the audience wonders how it managed to take that character so long to come to that conclusion! My favourite line in the film is from disgruntled researcher Yamada who, at one significant moment, states that "I have been reborn as tuna!" An immortal line in anybody's book, I think. What keeps this film from flying all the way apart is its gonzo spirit and absolute commitment to its absurdity, and there are also some excellent martial arts sequences, particularly from Keiko - Rina Takeda is a rising martial arts star, and she was still a teenager when she made this film. Some people might object to the excessive blood-letting, but it's done in such an extreme fashion that it's really just hilarious, not nauseating.

If the FantAsia International Film Festival needs a descriptive film to show what it's all about, "Dead Sushi" is perhaps that very film, and it is really only right and proper that it had its World Premiere at this festival. The film was introduced by its director and co-writer Naboru Iguchi, and Ms. Takeda was also on hand to demonstrate some of her martial arts moves live; Mr. Iguchi encouraged the packed auditorium to yell out "danger!" or "sushi!" at appropriate moments, and the FantAsia audience took him up on it with great enthusiasm. Easily my favourite film of FantAsia 2012 so far, and one that I hope gets a wide distribution because it has to be seen (and guffawed at) to be believed!

I just had the pleasure of seeing this great Japanese comedy-horror film at the Fall 2012 HIFF film showcase tonight and I'm glad that I got tickets for it and went to see it! First off, I want to tip my hat to the director & his film crew for making a great film that will appeal to genre & foreign film fans. Also, I'd like to tip my hat off to the main actress, Rina Takeda who showed up for both screenings of this film at HIFF over the weekend. I always enjoy seeing any of the people involved with any film big or small show up at festival screenings and really show off and share their labor of love with the audience as well as interact and answer questions too.

If you don't know the director, Noboru Iguchi, go and look up some of his previous work such as 2008's Machine Girl and also check out his entry in the horror film anthology The ABCs of Death which is circulating around the film festival circuit. Not one to make your typical comedy OR horror film that the Japanese can be known for, Dead Sushi is no different from his previous work. What is really enjoyable about this particular film is how campy it is but also how it really seems like everyone involved had a good time making the film which is always a plus!

The basic plot of the movie is that Rina Takeda plays Keiko, a girl who is the daughter of a sushi chef in Japan. Keiko's father attempts to pass on the fine culinary art of sushi making to her but is disappointed that she has great difficulty in mastering the skill which eventually causes her to leave home and find another job elsewhere as well as her true calling. Short while later, we see that Keiko is working at a hotel-inn that is renowned as a popular getaway spot as well as supposedly for its sushi. Unfortunately, Keiko is pretty burnt out from working at such a soul sucking place where serving the customer is a high priority but she also gets picked on by her fellow workers(2 other hostesses). Just as the other 2 hostesses have finished playing a little prank on her by giving her the 2 trays of food they are each carrying, a big corporate client comes in with his entourage of businessmen looking for a nice inn to stay at and be served. Poor hapless Keiko, wanting to be as best a servant as possible, quickly but sloppily cleans herself off and comes out to join the other hostesses in greeting the visiting client(s) but winds up embarrassing the owners of the inn & herself by showing up rather disheveled with remnants of food hanging from her hair and yukata. Because of this embarrassment, the owner of the inn & his wife take her aside and chastise her for making a mockery of their business and tell her that she needs to take her job more seriously which causes Keiko great frustration. Shortly after this dressing down by the owners, she is approached by the groundskeeper Sawada who tells her not to give up and to keep trying her best.

Up until this point, the film is fairly straightforward and normal which isn't what you would expect from a Noboru Iguchi film but I promise you that things slowly but surely pick up from this point forward. The next scene features a young Japanese couple that have just landed in the area and have walked 20 minutes and found the hotel inn. The couple get into a brief little argument and start making out a little bit before they are interrupted by what seems to be a homeless man that is nearby and watching them make out while eating sushi. The young man that was making out with his girlfriend at this point decides to pick a fight with the homeless man and this basically results in death by squid(you have to watch to see the hilarity of this play out). It is from this exact point that the movie starts to move into the realm of the bizarre with the various seafood & sushi coming to life and attacking the hapless businessmen and the owners of the inn which all culminates in a ridiculous fight featuring:

-a battleship size sushi

-a million little baby sushi that are the result of 2 pieces of sushi mating

-a huge walking "Maguro(tuna) Man"fish

-sushi-zombies

If this all sounds wildly crazy, that's because it is! But if you've seen Noboru's previous work such as Machine Girl, you'll know that this is par for the course. Now you're probably wondering why I'm rating such a movie that is as ridiculous as this so well... Yes, this movie goes into the realm of the bizarre with "monster" sushi and other weird things including a talking egg sushi but it's all done very cleverly. As I mentioned earlier, you can clearly see that the actors are having fun with this film and enjoying themselves acting out ridiculous scenarios. The special effects are also really cheesy and obviously very low budget but again, that's not what you're here to see. In contrast to Machine Girl however, this film is a little more down to earth which is a little odd to say in the same sentence with "monster sushi", but trust me on this. By and large, what we have is a relatively mundane & normal situation taken to its extreme opposite but it never feels like the filmmakers and actors are going overboard and asking the audience to take things very seriously.

If you want to spend a fun night or would like to turn your mind off for a few hours and get a little cultural education about sushi and Japanese culture, this is a great film to do it with.

I would say I got exactly what I was expecting. For a Western viewer not used to Japanese humour, this kind of films always come as a bit of a culture shock. The humour is so bizarre it couldn't possibly be explained with words. The CGI is cheap, but the film isn't ashamed of it - it's almost as if it celebrates its own tackiness.

It's full of mindbogglingly grotesque idas and quotes, and it's devilishly entertaining!