April 29th - Y is for Yokai Monsters - Spook Warfare
You wouldn’t expect a Japanese story to start out in the ruins of Babylonia now would you? Well, this movie does, and you’d better watch out because there are ancient demons afoot in the ruins! This is your typical Japanese monster movie except instead of being in a future with lasers and Mechas, we’re in a past filled with magical Yokai and samurai lords. I can’t judge this by the normal criteria I would wit ha modern film since this is a film from 1968 when things weren’t as advanced.
The one thing I think this movie has over newer movies though is probably in the story department. Because they didn’t have as much to spend on special effects, this movie had to have a solid story to keep the people hooked into the story. The story itself is a wonderful mix of suspense and comedy that even each other out so that it feels very even and I didn’t have trouble staying interested till the end. The story is definitely one of the most coherent ones that I’ve reviewed this month, and it definitely makes up for the sometimes atrocious costumes. The special effects are okay, but some of the Yokai just look like the plain rubber suits they are.
SO, overall, you get a story with characters that are definitely worth your time with the down side that some of them look bad. I guess that in the past movies focused on giving you a story with some sort of moral, and today we go to see a movie to see big pretty explosions and “epic” CGI locations. While I’m not sure if all of the Yokai Monsters movies (there’s at least 3 under that title) are like this one, but I would highly recommend this movie if you wanted a really good Japanese monster movie to watch that isn’t too scary and has some context. 5 out of 5 (ignoring the fact that it’s old).
No comments:
Post a Comment