User Reviews

I got hold of this film because it was directed by the same guy who did Tetsuo, and after having my senses bludgeoned and rearranged by that freak fest I sat down to this expecting a similar fun filled tale of gory man / machine transformation, self mutilation and object rape. So I was disappointed with this film, but if I watched in with an open mind my opinion might be different.

This film has more in common with the recent horror of Hideo Nakata than Tsukamoto's earlier work; you actually know what the hell is happening and you are actually given a chance to get familiar with the characters. If it had gone for this type of standard-fare horror it would have worked pretty well; but the story of decapitations and goblins sits rather uneasily beside frequent outbursts of slapstick humour and comedy. Again, this would have worked in the same way as the likes of Ghostbusters if it wasn't for the frequent outbursts of blood and gore, and severed heads walking around on spider's bodies (The Thing, anyone?). The music, to, sounded nice on its own but just didn't work with the film.

So really this film is a case of ice cream on pizza. It has many good elements, but they really shouldn't have been mixed. I would have liked to see a gory Japanese horror about a school on the gates of hell. I would have liked to see a Japanese comedy / horror about a bumbling goblin hunter. This film does both of these very well, and for that it is worth a watch. But they should really be on the same piece of celluloid. You could watch it with an open mind, but defiantly do not expect anything like Tsukamoto's other work.

If you were going to pick a director to helm a zany comedy horror, Shinya Tsukamoto would not be high up your list. Though a master artist and a consummate professional, Tsukamoto's mainstay is obscure art-film like Tetsuo and Bullet Ballet. Yes Tetsuo is effectively a horror and is as balls-to-the-wall frenetic as you're ever likely to see, but it's not a straight horror and it certainly isn't funny past the madcap energy it's possessed with.

This is why Hiruko just plain doesn't work. It's apparently Tsukamoto's only foray into studio movies, and I can see why they never brought him back. For practically the entire movie, Hiruko threatens to A: Make the characters believable and B: Let loose with the creatures and the silliness, but Tsukamoto gets distracted every time by the possibility of a well-shot flashback or artistically edited kill sequence. Newsflash, if you're going to decapitate somebody in a horror movie, do it properly. No one will be shocked, so get on with it and don't hack it into 75 different shots to try and justify the violence.

Hiruko manages to at times pick up the psychotic pacing and energy of the Evil Dead series, and Tsukamoto is obviously influenced by Raimi's style, but hasn't picked up on the silliness of the Evil Dead films. The gleeful overkill and total disrespect for realism they showed is in part present in Hiruko. However, sequences like when the goblin traps itself under a saucepan and wanders about aimlessly, or another bit where a character crawls away from the goblin at speed and accidentally traps his arms in a cardbard box are genius, but they're sandwiched between constant dull plot exposition.

And oh lord, the dullness. Instead of concentrating on the cool things about the characters and plot, like Hieda's habit of making anti-goblin equipment out of his kitchen utensils or the fact that the other fella is growing little heads on his body every time the goblin kills someone, Tsukamoto falls into textbook Asian horror cliché A. What is that folks? C'mon, you know it and so do I! That's right! The 'oh god I did something awful and must atone for it by fighting with supernatural forces beyond my comprehension and OH LORDY you appear to be some kind of reincarnation/chosen one and ALONE have the power to stop this' cliché. My god, if I see one more film from Japan where the main character accidentally let someone die and their mate has to save them I will resign and start watching romantic comedies. Seriously, write something else, and preferably don't make yer horrors overly complicated. Basically, splatter horror (which this basically is, arty and overly-complicated as it is) is like R-Type. It sure as hell didn't need much of a storyline in the 80s and it still doesn't now. Leave the clever stuff to psych-horror like Shutter.

Hiruko the Goblin is unfortunately a textbook exercise in how to over-think making a genre flick. If Tsukamoto stopped thinking (unnecessarily) about an incredibly ropey plot and minor details and concentrated on making a kick-ass horror comedy about head-stealing spider-goblins (which this movie could so easily become with a few minor tweaks) it would have rocked, but unfortunately it just stands as an awkward and at times extremely dull art-house stab at a genre movie.

Shinya Tsukamoto made this after Tetsuo and instead of the monochromatic cyrber punk madness of that movie, he's somehow taken a manga by Daijiro Morohoshi and made a movie that is at once horrifying and charming, as if Spielberg wanted to make a Fulci movie and decided that it should be as cartoony as possible while having nightmare fuel embedded insie every frame.

Archaelogist Reijiro Hieda (Kenji Sawada, the only Japanese person other than Yoko Ono to be on the cover of Rolling Stone) has some out there supernatural ideas that get him almost disbarred. Yet his brother-in-law Takashi Yabe (Naoto Takenaka) has discovered an ancient tomb built to seal in a yokai behind the school that he teaches at, but has disappeared along with a student named Reiko Tsukishima (Megumi Ueno).

Tabe's son Masao (Masaki Kudou) is searching for his father when he sees Reiko at the school, but several people he knows get murdered and each of their faces appear on his back as smoke rises off it. The culprit? Her singing head, floating around the building.

Yeah, Hiruko the Goblin has just started and it's already beyond wild.

It turns out the Masao's grandfather had the same faces on his body sixty years ago and he had promised to keep the school sealed, as it contains a demon named Hiruko, who has turned all of her victims into spiders with human heads that chase our heroes through a system of caves as monstrous mouths come out of the ground and scream for them.

Monster hunting homemade technology, fighting demons with bug spray, demons that crawl on the floor and come shooting at your throat, incantations and rituals, plus slapstick? Man, they don't make movies like this ever. Get this now -- it's really and truly unique and wonderful.

If TETSUO and THE BODY HAMMER were anime-inspired (and, it seems to me, they clearly were), then HIRUKO THE GOBLIN appears to be more manga-esquire in its execution. It has a comic book feel from the very beginning. Eschewing the graphic gore and kinetic kinema that inform the aforementioned TETSUO twosome, Tsukamoto with HIRUKO opts instead for a more formal and less experimental approach. I won't go so far as to say that HIRUKO is by any means bland, but it certainly lacks any of the visceral visual punch that the director's earlier films boast. (Even as accomplished a filmmaker as David Cronenberg, whose earlier films certainly packed a wallop, began to mellow later in his career; and his later films, while not forgettable, were, nonetheless... less.) If you like manga or anime, or live-action anime like ZERAM, you'll like HIRUKO.

A crazed, gory, wonderfully absurd and furiously kinetic piece of Asian supernatural horror hokum; it's a feverishly inventive, turbo-charged, hard-driving trash terror item that's deliriously overloaded with demented imagination, wild-eyed passion, devilishly frolicsome wit and rip-roaring flair to spare. In short, it's a real pip.

A brutal, lethal, nearly unstoppable all-powerful otherworldly force wreaks plentiful grisly havoc in a remote rural school, decapitating students and transforming their severed noggins into swift, deadly creatures which are jet-propelled by speedy, ultra-sinewy spider legs. Two teenage guys bravely attempt to thwart the wildly out of this world supernatural mayhem, with the expected madly disastrous full-throttle four-sheets-to-the-wind insane nerve-jangling and life-threatening results.

This baby's got it all: briskly efficient pull-out-all-the-stops virtuoso direction, handsome, hyperactive vertiginous cinematography (the quick, super-smooth scuttling POV shots of the killer heads on the prowl are great), an intense, ominous, flesh-crawling mood that gradually escalates into all-out pandemonium, a few breathtaking moments of serenely surreal beauty, frenetically headlong pacing, gorgeously slick high-gloss production values, some pretty pastoral visuals, and a funny, appealing oddball nonconformist bespectacled dweeb protagonist -- he's a rogue, family-tradition-be-damned archaeologist named Hiruko, to be exact -- who's undoubtedly the best scrawny, weak-kneed, chicken-hearted limp dishrag unlikely savior of mankind since Zalman King's sweaty, constantly twitching dippy hippie dropout from "Blue Sunshine" (Hiruko's shrill, girlish screaming is especially hilarious -- and the bulky suitcase full of ineffectual state-of-the-art technological hoodads is a nice touch, too).

The splashy, excessively nasty and explicit splatter f/x really deliver the ghastly groceries: Heads are messily ripped off so blood can copiously spew forth like a bright red crimson geyser, gruesome eviscerated corpses are strewn about the school's hallways, one character develops a burning (and smoking!) boil on his neck, a spider head tries to fatally French kiss one dude with its harmful elongated prehensile tongue, and other such gleefully grotesque stuff. The truly off the wall final, in which our bumbling, but stalwart heroes are attacked in a dark, dank cave by a murderous multitude of encroaching spider heads and do their best to fend off the vile beasts with cans of insect repellent (!), deftly walks a fine line between blackly comical bedlam and grimly apocalyptic horror; it induces both nervous giggly laughs and genuine scared shudders in equal proportion. A delectably deranged and enjoyably over the top gem.

This was a film I had never heard of until the list for a podcast best the 1990's came out. I had some trouble finding this, but did procure a copy to check out. I did look into this while trying to find a way to see it and learned it is based off a manga, which from my understanding is an adult comic book much like a graphic novel. The synopsis is that when a Gate of Hell is opened, Hiruko a goblin, comes through to attempt to fully open it. An archaeology professor and a haunted student must stop it before it is too late.

We start this off being introduced to Hieda Reijirou (Kenji Sawada). Through dialogue he used to be a great archaeologist, but decided to give it up for the similar work he does now. The guy telling the story kind of mocks him to those that are listening. We then see a young woman riding her bike before we shift over to Takashi Yabe (Naoto Takenaka). He is in a cave and a woman joins him. He tells her to go back as it is dangerous, but she tags along. They uncover something that picks them up and throws them back.

The film then shifts to Masao Yabe (Masaki Kudou) and his two friends. School is closed for the summer, but he is up there looking for someone. Through a window he sees his crush, Tsukishima Reiko (Megumi Ueno) as someone approaches her. Masao then has a reaction and his back is smoking. There is something not quite right at this school and Watanabe (Hideo Murota) chases the boys off.

A letter comes for Hieda asking for his help with a discovery. He reluctantly agrees to go to the school, but before he leaves he has a freak over a cockroach and we see he has insect spray to kill it. He comes to the school where Masao and his friends are at. When he arrives, there's something not quite right going on here. We get a POV of something that is lower to the ground and the entity goes after Masao. Hieda saves him from it. The student thinks that it is Watanabe trying to scare them, but Hieda knows that it is Hiruko a dangerous goblin. Masao is hiding a secret that get worse with every death around him. His crush for Reiko is tested as well when we see what she's become. Can whatever is happening here be stopped before it is too late?

Now for this review, I wanted to go a bit vague here to avoid spoiling things. This film doesn't have the deepest story, but I definitely think that it is one that you should experience it. That is actually a great way to describe the events that happen. Something that really struck me too was that I could tell this was coming from a manga as it feels like a horrific comic book movie. I think that really works for what we get, as a lot of it is a bit over the top. It actually makes me want to seek the manga as well, not going to lie.

What I really want to cover next about the film is the villain. We never actually see what it looks like. We do get to see it having the head of Reiko on it. If you've seen one of the cases for this, you can see that it makes a spider-like creature. I'm not sure if this is legitimately lore in Japan, or just something that was made up for the manga. There is one later in the film though that is even scarier looking. I just like the idea that there is this forbidden place that if opened, could release all of these creatures on the world. When you get to see inside, it was pretty creepy to be honest.

To shift back a minute to the comic book feel of the film, I do think that it creates some issues for me as well. The comedy doesn't really work, but I get what they're going for. I do think that it lightens the tension a bit and takes away from it, instead of just being there to enhance it. With that said, I was completely entertained from start to finish and it does build tension. There's also some really good writing here as we are shown so many images that come into play later. The ending gets a little bit cheesy with some of the effects that are shown.

As to the acting of the film, I think it is actually pretty solid. I like that this film actually has the roles reversed. Sawada believes in these creatures, but only because of facts. He has learned the legends and knows that there is something inside of this stone chamber. Him believing actually saves those around him. Kudou is interesting the more we learn about his back-story. The physical representation of what happens to him when those die around him had me wanting to know more. I also really like how he plays into the ending. Murota is kind of funny and I like his back-story as well. He played this role very stoic and somewhat angry, but it fit very well. I also thought Ueno does a solid job, speaking her as a normal character isn't really used much and a lot of it done after she's been taken over. The rest of the cast rounded out the film for what was needed in my opinion.

Something I was a fan of with this film was the effects. There are definitely some wild ones here. We get some blood that looks a bit bright, but I don't really have any issues there. I almost wished the film would have gone a step farther with that. The effects for the spider head creatures I was a big fan of to be honest. They use stop motion to bring some of it to life and it works. The usual Japanese visions of ghosts are used here with the overly white face. Overall the effects are done practically and I think it really works out well. It is also shot very well in my opinion.

As for the soundtrack of the film, it didn't really stand out to me for the most part. There were just a couple of moments where I believe Ueno is singing. It is kind of haunting for the scenes it is used in and how cheery the song sounds. It is pretty effective to be honest. Other than that, the rest of the score fit for what was needed with the scenes and it never took me out of it.

Now with that said, this is definitely a film that I had a lot of fun with and would probably check out again. I wouldn't be surprised if with a second viewing my rating even came up on it. I think it has an interesting story and concept, but I think some of the humor does take away some of the tension. It does build to a solid conclusion regardless. I think the acting is good and the effects don't always look great, but for what they were working with are fine. The soundtrack definitely fit with the cheery songs making the some scenes even more unnerving and makes it even more atmospheric. I will warn you this is from Japan, so I had to watch with subtitles on. Not the greatest film out there, but I definitely enjoyed my ride with it.