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Overrated

Lack of good storyline.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

What is really disappointing about this movie is that the art direction is so fantastic, it makes the inane acting so upsetting to watch. Seriously, 3/4 of this movie focuses on the main character stumbling around, falling down, and then waddling around on the ground like an invalid. None of the characters act at all rational, and yet they are all surrounded by amazing sets and brilliantly realized visions of the apocalypse. If only the director could have things move faster, or have people stop falling over. I thought to myself, "if I took a drink every time someone falls down to the ground, I'd be dead." It might make a fun time at a party of with some friends, but if you're looking to enjoy a good movie, I would skip out on this tumbling mess.

While Japanese theater has reached a new height in the west, there are still some duds to be seen. The premise of "Dragonhead" is a great one, 3 students survive a train wreck in a tunnel on the way home from school. One of them decides to get out of the tunnel and get to the surface any way possible where they find Japan changed drastically. Total destruction as far as the eye can see from an unknown cause. This premise opens the door on LOTS of possibilities, but the film falls short of any real scares. The problem that I had was that the film has a feel of a society in months or years of disintegration, not days. There are kids that have had MAJOR brain surgery and fully recovered, fully degenerated people out to kill themselves and the students that find them, and a somewhat weak explanation of magnetic forces on the brain. Originality aside, this film fails to deliver what so many other Japanese films do well. Skip this one.

Yes, the manga-inspired art direction is very fine. Too bad there's no plot, and it's paced slower than a Bergman film, and there's not a single actor in it who knows how to convey distress without shouting, whining and falling down. Literally, they spend most of the movie doing those three things, over and over and over, until you wonder why they don't all kill one another and drink one another's blood--not to survive, but just to shut everyone up. For a post- apocalyptic sci-fi type film, it's amazing how very little else happens in its very s- l-o-w two hours. And yet for all its ponderous and portentous stylings, it says nothing to us about survival or friendship or civilization or etc.--all the Big Issues this type of movie is supposed to have us ponder--that we don't get from airheaded Hollywood blockbusters like "Armageddon" and "War of the Worlds."

Having watched a huge panorama of movies already, i was pleased to see Dragonhead. It is an Easter-Asian movie, and i decided to watch quite a few others after this one. The special effects are just good, sometimes really good. It is a good approach to such a movie too, because you start to think it's a nuclear disaster at the beginning, and then you find out it's actually something a bit worse than that, when the crust of the earth moves, the Earth's balance shifts. That's true, but especially when the magnetic field gets messed up, our apocalypse will come, or rather will rain down on us without holding back the tears of destruction. When you have a volcano popping up not far from you, and throwing up huge magma bricks at you, that is not nice, i wasn't surprised the humans, well at least the Japanese lost the will to fight for life. But then again, some people have to believe in the future, because there is always a future, no matter how grim things look like. I put 10/10 for Dragonhead, because of its realism, Apocalypse is not about happiness, it is boring, and everyone just needs to find the will to fight on, against all odds. If you like something a bit different than big blockbusters, then this movie is so for you, because in Asia they approach everything from an objective point of view, that is what makes their quality.