The Origin of Ultraman (Yu Nakamura & Kazuki Yoshida, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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Ultraman is one of Japan’s most recognisable cultural phenomena. Loved by generations of children, the landmark special effects-heavy drama has proved incredibly influential. Despite its title, Yu Nakamura and Kazuki Yoshida’s documentary The Origin of Ultraman isn’t actually as much interested in the franchise’s history as it is in its reception, focusing on the recollections of filmmakers and creatives from Japan and beyond discussing what Ultraman meant to them.

In fact, the film is largely structured around a discussion between directors Hirokazu Koreeda and Guillermo Del Toro who find unexpected commonality in the reception of Ultraman in Japan and Mexico respectively. Nevertheless, one of the drawbacks of this approach is that it unwittingly adopts a US-centric sensibility in contrasting the lack of cultural impact the series has had in America with that in other areas of the world, while later somewhat contradicting itself in featuring discussions with the American directors of the Netflix-produced US animation Ultraman: Rising.

Though the insights provided by Del Toro in particular are often interesting, the film is at its best when focusing on those who actually worked on the series and were involved with its original run in the mid-1960s. One of the reasons for the franchise’s success seems to have been the determination of everyone involved to create something that felt real and authentic. No one was interested in writing the show off as disposable entertainment for children, but rather precisely because it was aimed largely at a younger audience, the creative team were universally focused on providing high-quality entertainment. 

Nevertheless, despite Eiji Tsuburaya’s admiration for the stop motion techniques he so admired in the Hollywood movie King Kong, the decision to use humans in suits was born of the realities of television production in Japan. Incredibly tights budgets and production schedules simply would not allow for a complex and time-consuming process such as stop motion. Instead, they used Tsubuyara’s iconic talent with miniatures to provide a sense of reality.

The film suggests that this sense of conviction in their work stems from the fact that, Eiji Tsuburaya aside, most of the creatives behind the creation of Ultraman were born in 1930s and had spent their childhoods against the backdrop of the war. They were interested in sending a more idealistic vision to the next generation of children that was about goodness and harmony. Nevertheless, despite their experiences and anti-war stance, they still had an admiration for the machinery of warfare and were attracted to the “coolness” of guns, tanks, and aeroplanes.

This contradiction is apparent in the Buddhist underpinnings of Ultraman’s design and the world that surrounds him. Ultraman then takes on a kind of divine presence representing “cosmos” in a constant battle with the “chaos” of the kaiju to maintain peace and balance in the universe. This duality is also reflected in his merging with the human Hayata and willingness to give up his own life to save him, eventually along with all mankind. Ultraman does not actually like fighting the kaiju and rarely kills them, while kaiju are not necessarily evil so much as just being what they are.

Del Toro suggests these themes as a reason why the show found an audience in Catholic Mexico it evidently didn’t in the predominantly Protestant United States. Monsters in American movies, he says, tend to be unnaturally oversized animals, in contrast to kaiju which often have more complex personalities and humanlike thought patterns. Which is to say they too have a quality of divinity or innocence. On discovering a kaiju graveyard, the decide to hold a Buddhist funeral for the fallen kaiju out of respect for their lives.

In other ways, however, the show was also a counter to the optimism represented by EXPO ’70 reflecting a degree of anxiety about scientific progress and the responsibilities that come with it. These dualities and contradictions seem to have struck a chord with post-war children who were drawn to the sense of safety and certainty Ultraman provided. Hideko Anno describes his encounter with the series as a kind of “curse”, realising that most of his work has just been in one way or another a reflection of Ultraman and that he is creatively unable to escape its influence. This may perhaps go someway to explaining the origin of Ultraman’s appeal as a force of unambiguous good in world that can, in other ways, seem random and chaotic.

The Origin of Ultraman screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Gamer Girls (電競女孩, Sophie Yang & Veronica Bassetto, 2025)

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Losers never win again, according to some in Sophie Yang & Veronica Bassetto’s e-sports dramedy Gamer Girls (電競女孩). Now in her mid-20s, Summer (Angela Yuen Lai-Lam) gave up her e-sports career after a defeat, disbanding her team, and going back to school to get a regular corporate job instead. But somehow she can’t quite settle into the conventional life her boyfriend and family want for her. Still seeing the world like a video game, she dreams of winning e-sports glory once again but faces several barriers from ingrained societal misogyny to ageism and workplace exploitation.

Indeed, it seems that part of the reason the team broke up was the unreasonable expectations of their manager, Ms. Chiu (Cheuk Wan-chi), who now works for the Hong Kong e-Sports Chamber of Commerce. Another reason seems to have been conflict between team captain Summer and fellow player Lilith (Alma Kwok) who became frustrated with what she saw as Summer’s unilateral decision making and inability to take her teammates’ thoughts and feelings into account. Raven (Sabrina Cheung), meanwhile, still resents Summer for abruptly selling out by abandoning them to take a more conventional path despite having promised to carry on playing games together forever.

To that extent, the film seems to be another in a recent line exploring young people’s sense of dissatisfaction with the working environments their parents have railroaded them towards all their lives. Given the economic pressures of the contemporary society in which things like buying a flat and starting a family are out of reach for most, many feel that it’s no longer worth the sacrifice of long hours spent in an office doing a job that probably doesn’t interest them for so little reward. Instead they favour less conventional lifestyles that offer more freedom even if it comes at the cost of economic stability. Summer feels embarrassed around her family having insisted that e-sports could be “a real job” only to end up working in an office anyway, but still isn’t really ready to commit fully to the conventionality being imposed on her not least by her handsome and kind boyfriend who nevertheless can’t understand any other way of living and thinks her decision to quit her job is an act of madness.

But at the same time, it’s clear that she’s fighting an uphill battle in the e-sports world where male players refuse to accept that girls could be real gamers, instead branding them “gamer whores” who are are only there as eye candy to trick men into buying things they don’t need. Ms. Chiu makes it clear that Summer blew her chance and she doesn’t want to work with her as a gamer because losers never win again, but would be willing to collaborate with her in business terms which aren’t so much different from her own job. Summer’s escape from the corporate life is in that way also being swallowed by it as big business seeks to control the world e-sports through things like licensing and sponsorships.

The fact that the Gamer Girls rebel by setting up their own local community tournament in Lilith’s family-run cha chaan teng could also be seen as their desire to defend traditional Hong Kong culture against oppressive external forces. Whatever else happens, the cha chaan teng will still be here, one says as they root themselves more firmly in a local community filled with people who just want to play and not have to deal with any of the corporate rubbish that stands in the way. There is a kind of naivety involved in Summer’s certainty that it’ll be alright despite being warned several times that they don’t have licences to use the games in this way and the only reason they haven’t been shut down yet is because the companies are turning a blind eye. When Ms. Chiu feels threatened and decides to act, the swift deletion of everyone’s accounts, along with years of gaming history, reminds them that their world could be taken away from them just like that.

But their response is one of mutual solidarity, committing to rebuilding and defending the community they have created in the cha chaan teng and competing on their own terms. Even Summer’s online friend Login (Chase Chan Chung Chak) who was “banned for life” after protesting exploitative employment practices in professional e-sports begins to realise that nothing actually prevents him from just playing the game aside from his own sense of disappointment. Which is to say, they took their world back, if only to an extent in that they are still at the mercy of those who own the games and their in-game successes are only ever fantasy projections of battles unwon in their offline lives. Nevertheless, have at least decided to play on their own terms valuing sportsmanship and community over corporate success.

Gamer Girls screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

You Are the Film (君は映画, Makoto Ueda, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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What if you went to see a film, but it was actually just a Zoom meeting with another person who thought they were there to see a film about you? That isn’t quite what happens in Makoto Ueda’s directorial debut You Are the Film (君は映画, Kimi wa Eiga), but it does take the protagonists longer than one would expect to stop suspending their disbelief, convinced that “a film” is conversing with them, and consider that they’re actually just watching a live feed of another person who is also watching them. 

But then again, the image reflected back at them from the screen is also a kind of wilful fantasy designed as both an escapist flight from an unsatisfying “reality” and a means of reframing their current dilemmas so that they can think about them more clearly. Effectively, it’s a way of realising what you might advise someone else to do in this situation, but wouldn’t actually consider doing yourself until you’re given this external vision of your own life. Ueda hints at this subtlety in the film’s opening sequence as he has playwright Madoka (Marika Ito) walk past a forked road representing a bifurcated reality, just as the film she’s going to see takes place directly adjacent to where she’s currently watching it, which is also the environment in which she spends the majority of her life. 

Both she and struggling musician Kazuma (Kai Inowaki) have enough in common to see themselves in the protagonist of the other film, and not just because Kazuma also inhabits this physical space too just on the other side of Madoka. He has a strained relationship with a band member and is so far failing to sell enough tickets for their upcoming concert. Madoka, meanwhile, has been offered the opportunity to put on a play at a larger, more prestigious venue but is feeling the pressure and struggling to complete her script. Despite what originally seems to be a very weird and uncanny situation, they eventually realise that they are able to help each other in a more direct way such as feeding back information about their respective “films” from the pamphlets they sell at the cinema.

But at the same time, the film seems to be in a way satirising these kinds of indie dramas or at least the sci-plot that develops on Madoka’s side is not that far away from the kind zany fringe theatre that troupes like hers often perform. In fact it’s even foreshadowed in the opening sequence as her co-stars seemingly play princess and retainer from another world mystified by the existence of a thermal tumbler, an apparent symbol of corporate oppression. Kazuma’s meanwhile spirals into an unlikely crime drama when his bandmate steals some money from a pair of counterfeiters which eventually exposes that the rock cafe he frequents is a front for an illegal gambling den run by an undercover gangster.

Despite these seemingly apocalyptic scenarios, what they learn is that they are able to change the script and eventually escape their own movie by transcending it, leading to the creation of a third movie starring those they left behind. It turns out that their friends are also yearning for escape in one way or another as Madoka’s friend Shiho has been offered a promising opportunity and secretly wants to move on, while the other actress sort of longs to escape by staying with the troupe but says she wants to leave as her parents have finally found out that she hasn’t been studying for the civil service exam after all. While watching these dramas play out Kazuma comes to his own realisations about his relationships with his bandmates, just Madoka begins to realise that all these desires must also be respected. If she wants to escape her movie, so does everyone else, and in order to be free she will have to let them go.

Nevertheless, each of them learn to embrace their status as the protagonist of their own lives with full authorial power to change the script, rejecting the meddling interference of some kind of engineer sent to rectify the “entanglement in filmspace” and get everyone back inside the right movie again. It turns out that you really are the film, and so is everyone else, but our realities aren’t as separate as they first seemed and we can still help each other out as we go along rather than remaining passive spectators within our own lives and those of others.

You Are the Film screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Specials (スペシャルズ, Eiji Uchida, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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Times are hard for yakuza these days. Nevertheless, it seems there’s still a little of the old spirit left in Eiji Uchida’s light-hearted caper The Specials (スペシャルズ) as an underling’s desire to make his boss’ dreams of ruling the city come true sees him enter the world of competitive dance. It’s a compelling hook, but at the same time a slightly mystifying one seeing as it’s never really explained why the assassins would need to form a dance troupe to knock off their target as opposed to just purchasing a ticket for the competition. Nor does it it explain why they want to shoot him from the stage rather than discretely injecting him with something from behind to make it look like a heart attack. And all of that aside, couldn’t they just kill him during his granddaughter’s dance rather than actually having to perform as part as part of the show?

Granted, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but as the gang are repeatedly told it’s not all about skill, passion counts for something. The main problem is that elderly rival boss Honjo seems to have an endless supply of henchmen who kind of look like him and are prepared to die in his place. The only time they can be sure it’s the real Honjo is when he attends his adult granddaughter’s dance competitions, which is why Kumashiro hits on the improbable idea of hiring a trio of assassins he believes has dance experience and getting them to enter in return for a huge reward. 

It doesn’t all quite go to plan, mainly because two of the assassins he picks are dealing with dance-related childhood trauma. The main man, Daiya, has retired from the hitman game and is currently working as a helper at an orphanage. He only agrees because the landlord’s trying to evict them so he can build luxury apartments there instead and they need money to buy the building back. The ironic thing is that one of the little girls there, Asuka, dreams of becoming a dancer. After the gang is kicked out of every dance school in the area due to their gloominess and emotional volatility, Asuka ends up becoming their coach. While there is something endearingly funny about the idea of these ice-cold tough guys being bossed around by a 10-year-old girl, there’s also an ethical issue that no one’s really considered yet given they’ve been lying to her about their true nature as killers for hire. Asuka will obviously want to be there if they make the final, and they don’t want to let her down but nor do they want her to witness them firing bullets from the stage to murder an old man and possibly a few others on the way given that this isn’t the most precise assassination plan.

Nevertheless, dance proves a liberating experience for all and as time moves on, most of the guys have sort of forgotten about their mission and are focussed instead of competition-winning glory. Even Kumashiro’s ambitious boss remarks that he seems different these days, somehow happier having traded his stern yakuza expression for something more friendly, which might not altogether be a good thing for his working life. The various assassins, who were accustomed to working alone, have now warmed to the idea of being part of a team and to a certain extent at least, it’s no longer purely about the money or achieving any of their singular goals. 

Then again, it says something that the ones who suffer most are old-school yakuza like Kumashiro and his prison buddy Murasame (played by V-cinema yakuza movie star Hitoshi Ozawa) who can literally only dance to old tunes and unlike the youngsters find it difficult to adapt to this more modern world in which things like loyalty have become “old-fashioned,” in the words of sullen hitman Kiryu. Though the tonal shift of the film’s unexpected final sequence may undercut the feel good quality of what is essentially a zany post-yakuza comedy that as much as possible glosses over the bloody reality, it does at least allow the gang to fulfil their mission in a more satisfying way that suggests loyalty may not be such an outdated idea after all.

The Specials screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Tokyo Burst: Crime City (TOKYO BURST-犯罪都市-, Eiji Uchida, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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Ma Dong-seok’s popular Roundup series has a rather convoluted history in terms of its titling. The first film was screened under the literal translated title “Crime City” before being retitled with the ironic “The Outlaws” while all subsequent instalments in the series have adopted the title of the first sequel. Nevertheless, this Japanese spin-off set in 2015 which is two years before the first film’s release, comes with the subtitle “Crime City” and though a Korean co-production does not actually feature Ma Dong-seok but rather attempts to tell a similar story set in the world of Kabukicho.

Which is to say that it takes its equally from delinquent high school manga such as Be Bop High School which is name checked within the film rather than the maverick cop hamstrung by bureaucracy trope that lies at the centre of the Korean series. Though The Roundup may itself have become increasingly less gritty as the series continues to expand, it largely remains grounded within a more concrete reality which is not really something you can say about Tokyo Burst: Crime City even if does hint at the ways in which the crackdown on yakuza has accidentally led other kinds of organised crime groups flourishing.

In this case, that would the incongruity of a crime syndicate led by a greedy host who heads the club Dreaming and presses those who work for him into petty crime if they can’t make their onerous quotas. In general, the stereotypical image of a “host” who earns money by drinking with women in dedicated bars, is of someone slightly effeminate and sensitive. Their livelihood depends on at least appearing non-threatening while providing the illusion of unconditional love and acceptance to their customers while also perhaps coming across as young, vulnerable, and in need of looking after. Though legislation has now been brought in to help stop hosts exploiting women financially until the point that they force them into sex work, the kind of masculinity they present is gentle and non-violent, which makes them a surprising presence in the ruthless world of organised crime.

Yet as is explained to Korean detective Si-won the major difference between the two nations is the extent to which police build relationships with underworld figures in order manage rather than eradicate crime in order to prevent large-scale violence breaking out, though Ma had also been doing something similar in the first Roundup film. The political corruption angle so common in Korean films in which the sons of chaebol families are effectively above the law plays a less well in the Japanese setting while a subplot about a land rights for casino construction,  and upcoming election, the thuggishness of the Deputy Prime Minister’s son, and their collaboration with organised crime facilitated by the familiar face of Ma’s sometime sidekick Jang Yi-soo, seems underdeveloped and impossible to take seriously given the film’s cartoonish tone.

Nevertheless, The Roundup’s uncomfortable tendency to make light of police brutality is fully carried over as violent cop Shiro actively covers up security cameras to interrogate suspects, while the police are also guilty of making use of connections to speed up or frustrate justice. They are otherwise a comically bumbling bunch as is yakuza boss hold-out Iwaki frustrated at the loss of his turf to the host club upstarts. Shiro stands somewhere in the middle as a bruiser cop with a strong sense of justice but perhaps not so much ethics. Nevertheless, he eventually bonds with his new Korean partner through singing Linda, Linda at karaoke while becoming invested in his quest to catch those responsible for his late partner’s murder before they return to the safety of Korea where they are otherwise above the law. Despite the overarching silliness, there is an endearing sense of lived-in community in the Kabuchiko environment of which Shiro is at the very centre and even if the film refuses to take anything else to seriously, it does at least commit to the ferocity and carnage of its intermittent action scenes.

Tokyo Burst: Crime City screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (no subtitles)

The Last Footage (Arkar Soe Oo, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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“Show some respect for things you don’t understand,” a creepy which intones, admonishing a group of city slickers fetching up in the forest with a dangerous disrespect for the natural world and what lies beyond in Arkar Soe Oo’s creepy found footage folk horror, The Last Footage. The first found footage films from Myanmar though apparently made for the international market rather than the purely domestic, the film is entirely shot with 4K camera-equipped glasses neatly juxtaposing an entirely new technology with ancient folk beliefs and ritual practices.

The opening sequence, however, seems to hint at the variety of uses these glasses can be put to from a young man taking a picture of his parents to another who surreptitiously Googles “how to talk to girls” while staring at an attractive woman in a coffee shop. A group of ghost hunters uses them to capture footage while walking around a former conference centre where large numbers of people died in an explosion before apparently meeting a sticky end after running into a weird cult. The ID numbers given suggest this footage is being stored somewhere else and is therefore somehow accessible externally.

Aung Khant seems to have bought the glasses just because they’re the cool new thing rather than a desire to capture something in particular. His friends describe him as being “obsessed with strange stuff” and recall a fairly disastrous trip they picked to a destination he picked, but don’t particularly seem to mind him documenting their every move through his glasses which, he points out, have excellent battery life. That comes in handy because the electricity’s been out at the strange little hut they eventually make it to after the coach they were travelling on breaks down right outside the forest.

Thu Ya has been left a sizeable amount of land on a former rubber plantation owned by his late grandfather. He plans to open a resort there, and suggests the group’s latest trip be to go check it out. In a way Thu Ya has received a toxic inheritance that he is ill-equipped to deal with, never really considering that his grandfather may have abandoned this place for a reason or that there really may be something dark and ancient lurking in the woods. They are all fairly affluent, educated urbanites who only joke about supernatural threats and are flippant about folk beliefs. Despite being urged not to do anything to disrupt the balance of the forest, two of the group engage in some black magic rituals as a joke using cow’s blood and candles they brought from home.

Stepping into the witch’s cottage, they may as well have entered another world as she makes cryptic pronouncements that “it has awakened” and there’s nothing to be done now except accept one’s fate. Obsessed with black magic rituals herself in an effort to resurrect her late son, the witch isn’t really interested in helping the gang or saving their lives. Beginning to realise they probably should have listened to Thu Ya’s uncle Ko Nyo who warned them that the forest was not a safe place, Aung Khant and his friends have little choice other than to do battle with the evil they’ve awakened in the hope of rescuing a missing child even if they themselves may not survive.

As the wearer of the glasses, Aung Khant is there to be an audience stand-in providing an immersive POV that gives the impression of actually being present. As such he is a fairly passive presence following those who take part in the action so he can witness and recored it through his glasses. In a sense, he embodies the camera and the fact that it is mounted in his glasses means that it can continue capturing images without his involvement. All he can really do, however, is watch as his friends desperately try to come up with solutions after deciding that they can’t run from this particular beast and will have to their best to fight it. As the witch had said, however, there are some things that cannot be understood but must be respected. They will pay a heavy price for their lack of respect for traditional folk practices and an ancient past from which they have become entirely disconnected. 

The Last Footage screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Seoul Guardians (서울의 밤, Cho Chul-young, Kim Jong-woo, Kim Shin-wan, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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Normality is such a fragile thing. It only takes a few seconds for everything to fall apart and the life you’ve known until now to completely disappear. Facing intense personal scrutiny and frustrated with opposition lawmakers doing exactly what they’re supposed to do in a democracy by opposing policies they disagree with, President Yoon Suk-Yeol announced martial law via a television broadcast late at night after many people had already gone to bed or at any rate were not particularly paying attention to the news. 

This was the first time that Martial Law had been declared since Chun Doo-hwan’s military coup in 1979. The democracy that the nation had carefully nurtured since Chun’s downfall in 1987 was under threat while Yoon ironically described opposition parties as a “legislative dictatorship” for blocking his policies. Following the declaration, ordinary citizens began to make their way to the National Assembly building to protest, but at the same time Yoon’s faction dispatched the police and army to encircle the building. Once martial law is declared, the president is supposed to attend the assembly for a free vote confirm its deployment, which Yoon failed to do while police and army made it difficult for lawmakers to enter the building and take their place to vote leading many, often not so young, officials to vault walls simply to enter the building. 

Comprised almost entirely of on-the-ground and stock footage and television news broadcasts, Kim Jong-woo, Kim Shin-wan, Cho Chul-young’s documentary viscerally depicts the sense of chaos and desperation of that night as the general population and lawmakers trapped inside the budding begin to realise that they have only this moment to stop the impending tragedy that Yoon has set in motion. “Remember Gwangju” some of the protestors shout. Interspersed with footage from 3rd December are flashes of newsreels from the Gwangju Massacre in 1980 in which state forces fired on protestors asking for the lifting the martial law that had been reinstated by Chun’s regime after he took power in a military coup shortly after the previous dictator, Park Chun-hee, was assassinated by the head of his own security team. 

The similarities between the two protests are striking as both utter near identical chants with the only real way to tell which footage is from 1979 and which from 2024 is by the video quality and the clothes that people are wearing. The night of 3rd December could have turned out so differently if even a single thing had gone wrong. A soldier’s gun going off or policeman losing his temper could have provoked further violence and brought about a world of nightly curfews and curbed freedoms that seems almost unthinkable in the present day. A curfew has already been declared active from 11pm, so all of these people are already breaking the law, but they choose to stay anyway in order to defend this fragile democracy.

There are also, of course, those who are there to support Yoon and feel as if he’s been unfairly treated. To them, he’s only right to do what he’s done because those “commies” on the other side wouldn’t let him get on with his work. By including footage from Yoon’s impeachment hearing, the documentary makes clear that this is not something that ended in the early hours of 4th December with Yoon recognising the unanimous vote to lift martial law, but an ongoing battle to resist authoritarianism and protect democracy however imperfect that democracy may also be. The question then is how robust these systems really are and if Yoon actually will be removed for having committed this offence against the normal functioning of government with a blatant power grab that effectively constitutes and attempt coup.

All that was really standing between Yoon and martial law was the will of the people who were willing to risk their safety and comfort and preserve their freedom and democratic rights. They looked back to those who had lost their lives in Gwangju and said, “We will remember you. We will not allow this to happen again.” In this way, as the voiceover from co-director Kim Jong-woo points out, the dead save the living in a very real living memory of the costs of authoritarianism. Though the film may play out like a thriller as those inside the assembly set up baracades fearful that paratroopers will storm the building and others call out to the young soldiers to obey their conscious and walk away, it is never flippant about the serious of this moment, nor the truth that a significant minority continue support Yoon and his policies which leaves ordinary people once again the guardians of a fragile democracy that maybe shattered at any moment.

The Seoul Guardians screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Colony (군체, Yeon Sang-ho, 2026)

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“Can you handle the freedom to be an outcast?” asks the villain of Yeon Sang-ho’s zombie-esque drama Colony (군체, Gunche) who believes that tragedies are caused by “imperfect communication.” He may not be entirely wrong, but his instinct to destroy all traces of individuality and replace them with a hive mind might not necessarily solve the problem in the way he implies it will, especially as it transpires that everyone will effectively be pulled into his own consciousness.

To that extent, the “zombies” in this film are representatives of social conformity, but perhaps they could also be read as an AI army with “psycho” scientist Suh (Koo Kyo-hwan) as the prompter. His big idea is bringing about a second cognitive revolution that emerges from a desire to repair the body so that those who have developed a disability would be healed. This is also, it turns out, a byproduct of being inducted into Suh’s hive where humanity must start from scratch evolving all over again. But at the same time, it seems like members of the hive still need to actively share information rather than simply having access to it. Suh gives them commands by shaking his head, while the zombies often stop dead and stare at the ceiling with their mouths open as if they were uploading something to the cloud. At one point, they’re seen accessing a computer to get the location of a room where one of their targets is hiding which demonstrates how far they’ve evolved in their ability to use tools, but at the same time they already have members of the security team in their hive. One would assume that they would already be familiar with the building’s layout and so the closest zombies could just start making their way there. This communication is still “imperfect” and Suh may choose not to share what he knows with the others anyway.

Professor Se-Jeong (Jun Ji-hyun), however, has never been one to go along with the group. Her exasperated ex-husband (Go Soo) complains that she’s always doing things that make people hate her, but still cared enough for Se-jeong to try to set her up with another steady job before he moves to America with his current wife and child. Which is all to say, she is very much prepared to be an outcast in a society in which challenging the system or disrupting group harmony are often taboos. She’s disadvantaged in her career because she turned another professor in for exploiting his research staff and misappropriating funds, meaning that others don’t necessarily want to work with her. She will, however, stand up for what’s right even when others won’t.

The government, meanwhile, is portrayed as another kind of group think if one paralysed by indecision because, unlike Se-jeong, they aren’t prepared to be hated by the public for making a call they disagree with even if it’s the right thing to do. With the building sealed off, orders have been given not to harm any of the infected in case they can be saved when they retrieve the vaccine from Suh, but it quickly becomes clear that the victims are most likely braindead and cannot be healed. Nevertheless, the policeman who takes Suh into custody eventually begins shooting his own team members, sacrificing them to protect Suh, while rescue teams deliberately leave other survivors behind. “It’s a shame,” one of the officers in control laments after seeing Se-jeong dart into a storage cupboard when the rescuers retreat with Suh, making it clear they have no intention of going back for her even though she’s been helping them retrieve the vaccine.

Her best ally turns out to be another female scientist, her ex’s wife Gong (Shin Hyun-been). Though you might expect the two women to loathe each other, they in fact get along quite well and have some affection for each other that makes Gong increasingly unwilling to toe the government line and leave Se-jeong to be devoured by the zombies. They are at least willing to stand up for the scientific argument and do what’s right, even if it’s not going to be popular and will make them outcasts for the rest of their lives. Someone has to be willing to make these difficult decisions from a position of rationality, the film seems to say. Nevertheless, it also argues for a slightly less prejudicial, more equal world in championing other kinds of outsiders such as a woman who uses a wheelchair and finds an ideal fit for her skillset in the zombie apocalypse and an old man who proves to be far more physically adept than an ageist society gave him credit for.  “I guess we have a lot of work ahead of us,” Se-jeong admits acknowledging that it will not end just with the quelling of this particular zombie horde.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Mouths (口に関するアンケート, Takashi Shimizu, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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“Do you think the mouth is the source of the trouble?”  A survey asks at the end of Takashi Shimizu’s haunting horror, The Mouths (口に関するアンケート, Kuchi ni Kansuru Anketo). Assuming for the moment that we’re talking about the human mouth, they can indeed get you into a lot of trouble, but at the same time that trouble starts somewhere much deeper down, so perhaps it isn’t really the mouth that’s to blame either, rather its owner who unwisely chose to make their unspoken thoughts spoken. 

According to the editor of a mystery magazine (Tokio Emoto), that really might be the curse. We project our negative emotions onto an object and grant it a kind of supernatural power that might in other ways be entirely manmade. People have decided a creepy old tree in a cemetery is “cursed”, but it’s become fashionable among young people to challenge themselves by walking up to it. Though the tree once signalled good fortune, people soon started using it to curse others by voicing their petty resentments, but perhaps it’s putting all these dark thoughts into the tree that’s made it a kind of repository for human fear and loathing. All those we meet who went to see the tree took someone with them that they wanted to suffer, though they also of course ended up suffering themselves.

A group of students sets out to see it full of bravado expecting a spooky night where nothing will actually happen, or at least nothing that they don’t make happen for themselves. But beneath the camaraderie, there are cracks in their relationship with what amounts to a complicated love square in which Tatsuya (Keito Tsuna) has started dating Shota’s (Rihito Itagaki) ex An (Ai Yoshikawa), but Shota wants her back. Mirei (MOMONA), meanwhile, whose name contains a sound that is associated with the supernatural, resents An mostly for disrupting the dynamics of the group and her relationships with both men though without really declaring any kind of romantic allegiance. An is not altogether a sympathetic presence and brands Mirei’s potentially psychic abilities as “lame”, but nevertheless falls victim to the tree, loses her mind, and then eventually disappears. 

The left-behind trio do their best to find her, but are really searching themselves questioning their relationships, desires, and what they really wanted out of visiting in the tree. Shota first heard about it from his colleague, Kawase (Tomoki Nishiyama). Who visited with a “friend” (Shoot Mori) who appears to be bullying him in the hope that he would get his comeuppance only for both of them to be left haunted, constantly fearing the reappearance of the tree’s animalistic woman who threatens to devour them. In some ways, the monstrous woman stands in for the dark heart of nature, seemingly in tune with cicadas and their strange humming, not different from An’s, which characterises a Japanese summer. The summer is also, of course, when this world and the other are at their closest.

Another question the survey asks is if you would share this story with a friend. Kawase, after all, shared it with Shota almost as if tempting him toward the tree, prodding him to act on his basest emotions. As the magazine editor says, perhaps the real villains are people like him who irresponsibly spread this kind of information and help to create urban legends that unwittingly draw people towards the darkness in their own hearts. He and a police detective (Shido Nakamura) nominally looking into An’s disappearance search for more concrete answers, but in the end come to no real conclusions wondering what it was these people saw in the tree that eventually took them to such a dark place.

Shimizu maintains the episodic structure of the source novel with several different chapters recounting the events from one person’s point of view in a theatrical monologue that at first seems as if it must be testimony for the detective, but later turns out not to be even if the detective listens to the stories they’ve recorded on his dictaphone. The survey also asks us why we think they recorded them themselves on their phones, which is a question often left unasked in genre films in which we gloss over these kinds of practical questions knowing that they do so as a storytelling device. Sooner or later they all declare that they have said all that they had to say, if as they were a kind of ghost in the machine about to dissipate as soon as the tale is told. But really, it’s the same question as why they talked to the tree. They needed some means of releasing all these dark thoughts, but releasing them didn’t really help. In fact, it seems to have made things quite a lot worse. Perhaps if they’d been able to talk to each other in a healthier way, there’d no be no need for cursed trees or the supernatural dread that comes with having transgressed on something no human is supposed to see. But then again, this darkness is a part of human nature as much as its part of a strange and arcane world. Perhaps it is your own mouth that will damn you in the end.

The Mouths screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

When You Open the Door (とびらをあけたら, Eriko Katagiri, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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Maybe mankind wasn’t really supposed to live indoors. Miki (Serena Motola) has a job at an architectural firm that mainly seems to involve drawing straight lines with a ruler and pencil. Her boss praises her for her “distinctive” drawing style. Yet Miki seems out of place at the office, as if her consciousness were somewhere else and only her body physically present. She is mostly silent, and does not accompany her colleagues when they all head off for lunch, preferring a solitary bun which in itself leads her to a strange destination. 

In Eriko Katagiri’s haunting drama When You Open the Door (とびらをあけたら, Tobira ow Aketara), it’s never quite clear how much is actually happening within an objective reality, and how much only inside Miki’s mind. She seems to be called back to the past and a childhood memory that is both comforting and nostalgic, but somehow ominous. Miki often appears to be slightly behind those around her, giving vague answers to questions after a long pause, such as when she tells her colleagues that the reason she’s late back from lunch is that she was bitten by a wolf. Her colleagues are confused, but they take what says at face value and set about trying to treat the “wound” though they can see no evidence of a wolf bite at the spot Miki points out. 

Nevertheless this “wolf bite”, echoing an incident in her childhood, seems to awaken something within her that has a deeper connection to the natural world. But this abrupt change in her character seems to worry her live-in boyfriend who explains that wolves are extinct in contemporary Japan. He takes her to a psychiatrist, but even he seems to entertain the idea that she is actually possessed by a wolf spirit. Meanwhile, this apparent possession introduces her to a community of older women, apparent devotees of an ascetic cult who howl at the moon in praise of “Toya-sama”. This secret society seems to offer her a refuge, a place where she can be supported by those like herself while communing with the natural world.

Her boyfriend’s desire to “cure” her is then perhaps an attempt to force her back into a more urban modernity and conventional femininity. Nevertheless, following the advice from the psychiatrist is in reality little different to the ascetic practice of the Itako spirit mediums who hid themselves away in caves without food and sleep in order to invite the wolf spirit in. His own lingering fear of abandonment seems to play a part in his isolation of her which also turns violent, while she in turn struggles with the decision of whether to open the door to whatever is waiting on the other side or spend her life in the comparative safety of a closed-off space.

But letting the wolf in, or perhaps out, also seems to return Miki more fully to the world. Though she is hungrier, devouring chicken drumsticks, she speaks less haltingly and has more to say. She seems to move with purpose and is no longer restricted to repeating conversations she’s had with others. Werewolves, a mother explains to her young son, look like people but eat human hearts. Perhaps this is what Miki has always been, but it’s not clear whether this is a largely metaphorical desire for human connection or romantic domination or a literally bloody act of dismemberment as implied by the fate of her childhood dolls.

Shadowy presences seem to pound on the walls of Miki’s consciousness requesting entry, and the film appears to take its cues from J-horror in exploring the pressing anxiety of darkened corners and lonely places while leaning in to darkness inherent in nature and things too ancient for us to fully understand. Even so, there is something quite captivating about the embracing of traditional female dance that brings about Miki’s transformation, engendering a liberation from the constraints of contemporary civility and acceptance of her authentic self as reflected back at her. Dream or reality, Miki’s consciousness seems to have undergone a change that leaves her happier, less alone, and more present if in what may be a purely subjective reality having learned to embrace her inner wolf.

When You Open the Door screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.