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Absolutely Fantastic

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

After opening an ancient tomb discovered beneath their school, teacher Takashi Yabe (Naoto Takenaka) and pretty student Tsukishima (Megumi Ueno) fall victim to the goblins trapped within. With the help of archaeologist Hieda Reijirou (Kenji Sawada), Takashi's son Masao attempts to prevent the goblins from escaping into our world.Tetsuo, The Iron Man, Shin'ya Tsukamoto's nightmarish cyberpunk cult hit, found its audience with the art-house/obscure horror intelligentsia; I can't imagine the same crowd going quite so gaga for Hiruko the Goblin, which takes a far less visionary approach, borrowing much of it its visual stylings from Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead and John Carpenter's The Thing.The film's plot is just as incomprehensible as Tetsuo's—I hadn't a clue what was happening for much of the time—but Tsukamoto eschews the surreal for a far more basic, splat-stick style, with plenty of gushing blood, crazy creatures, and chaotic, over-the-top acting. It might not make much sense half the time, but with decapitated heads sprouting legs, a crazy archaeologist armed with homemade goblin-hunting gizmos, and a young hero who develops burns on his back that resemble the goblins' victims, it's hard not to enjoy on the most basic of levels.

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.

This has the stiff direction and sterile feeling typical of many Japanese films, pretty deadly for a horror movie, especially one that's intended to have a number of wacky and wild moments. The story is extremely confusing, missing even token explanations for many things; it's like it expects us to be familiar with the story from its original source. When it's not boring, it's extremely bewildering. Some of the special effects aren't bad for what was a low budget, but they tend to be derivative of other (and better) horror and science fiction movies. See how many such references to other movies you can spot, if you should decide to see this movie despite what I've said.

I found a copy of this film without the benefit of English subtitling, but was able to figure out the story... vaguely, anyway. I have been a fan of this director's work for many years, particularly the excellent TOKYO FIST, so I was very happy to find this obscure little film.It seemed at first to be much more mainstream than the rest of Tsukamoto's films, but it did have its share of bizzare scenes... It is essentially a cross between EVIL DEAD II, THE THING, and THE CHURCH... but in Japanese. Mainly enjoyable, and a must for anyone interested in this guy's work. It is very strange indeed...