Over here in Germany, this zomcom was give the title Rage of the Undead, a title that is
easily open to misinterpretation in that it sounds soooo serious when this
mercifully short film (as in: it really doesn't overstay its welcome at only 77
minutes, even if it does fall apart towards the end) is anything but serious. It
is a typically batshit, blood-drenched Japanese black comedy grotesque along
the lines of, say, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009) or Tokyo Gore Police (2008),
but perhaps with a tad less gore and somewhat lower production values. Be
warned, though: "a tad less gore" hardly means that this film is
blood-lite – "blood-lite" seems never to be an option when it comes
to Nipponese comedies of this ilk.
Japanese
trailer to
Zomvideo:
°C-ute —
Ookina Ai de Motenashite:
Ookina Ai de Motenashite:
Zomvideo starts
off either somewhat meta or somewhat sloppy. The first person introduced is a
school-uniformed, henti-aged lass
running out of her house on the way to school, but she doesn't get very far
before running into a zombified busker with an Everybody Love Mary (1998 / trailer)
cowlick. Any notions that the lass might be the main character quickly go the
way of all the blood that spatters on the piece of breakfast toast she drops on
the ground, and soon she too is a cowlicked zombie. (Highly doubtful that this visual
zombie attribute will ever achieve canonization — but who knows. Do you know?
We don't know. Does Q know? He would, wouldn't he?)
And then comes something that either got lost in translation or was due
to cost-cutting measures or sloppy scriptwriting (or maybe we were so stoned we
mixed things up): the zombification scene is part of a video, an ancient
and shelved government-sponsored How to Survive
a Zombie Attack educational video — think of the "culturally, historically,
or aesthetically significant" short Duck and Cover but in blood-drenched full color and
with Asian zombies instead of turtles, little white kids and atom bombs — made
some decades earlier that the film's true heroine, the Asian-fetish-inducing
Aiko (19-year-old Maimi Yajima of Fuyu
no kaidan: Boku to watashi to obaachan no monogatari [2009 / full film],
Black Fox: Age of the Ninja [2019 / trailer]
and Ôsama gêmu [2011 / trailer]),
discovers while going through an unsorted archive pile of unmarked videos at
the video production company she works at (thanks to her uncle). But damn!
Those very same zombies are now banging at the door.
Okay, we admit that by now, a few days after having watched Zomvideo, we've sort of forgot some of
the motivations behind specific characters — the zombies — but then this
blood-spattered film is pretty ridiculous and little if anything was written or
intended to be deep and serious (though there is perhaps an interpretational
level to the flick on a kind of X-man level). In any event, the movie really
doesn't remain in your head too long: it is fun while it lasts, but is hardly
something to write home to your mama about. (Although you could, for unlike some other Japanese zombie
comedies out there, for example Zombie
Ass: Toilet of the Dead [2011 / trailer]
or Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead
[2011 / trailer],
Zomvideo doesn't leave you feeling
dirty and ashamed for having watched it.)
"Wait!" you say, "The zombies have a motivation? They
want more than to eat your guts or, as the case may be, brains?" Yes, indeedy! Here,
the zombies are led by the campy and at times annoying but always interesting Yasude
(Miyuki Torii, above not from the film, of the sequel to Meatball Machine
(2005), Kodoku: Meatball Machine
[2017 / trailer],
Zombie TV [2013 / trailer]
and Plan 6 Channel 9 [2016 / trailer]).
Dressed in an outfit that is a direct reference the famous Japanese cult
character Matsu the Scorpion (who was in turn played by the Japanese cult
actress Meiko Kaji), example poster below, Yasude's hat hides the fact that her
brains are hanging out. For whatever reason, she can control the zombies even
as she can control her own hunger for humans, and she and her sidekick (played
by another cookie-cut of °C-ute jailbait)
want something in the building where the horror-film-hating Aiko, her nerdy
zombie-film-loving coworker Hashimoto (Tomu Miyazaki) and her Uncle are the
last humans left alive. Luckily, the three have the Zomvideo to show them how
to fight and kill zombies with everyday items…
Zomvideo
will hardly appeal to serious zombie purists, even those who like humor between
the gut munching, for it leans way more towards the absurdly silly than the
scary or unnerving (as in: way more like the fabulously inane series Z-Nation [2014-18 / trailer]
than the mostly snore-inducing and traditional Black Summer [2019 / trailer]).
Despite the schoolgirls and nubiles, Zomvideo
refrains from sliding backwards to become just another Japanese underage-schoolgirl-fixated
slice of sexualized exploitation and, once the zombies attack, evolves into a
mildly surreal and offbeat grotesque that even includes moments of female
empowerment. The silly bizarreness of the humor goes a little over the top
towards the end with the big reveal of the video and doesn't really work, which
makes for a mildly sloppy and disappointing ending.
Nevertheless, on the whole Zomvideo
remains an amusing way to pass a short period of time (as said, 77 minutes).
Fun but inconsequential, the viewing experience is definitely improved with the
presence of beer and weed, as well as a larger and verbal viewing crowd in
front of the tube. Make this one a social experience.
But, really: zombie cowlicks?
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