A low-budget zombie film is being shot at an abandoned water treatment plant. (At an isolated location, of course. No cellphone service.) There are murky rumours about the building’s past – secret government experiments on humans, maybe even dead humans, that kind of thing.

The director (Takayuki Hamatsu) is excitable and demanding. Some crew members say he’s a psycho, though not to his face. The young female lead (Yuzuki Akiyama) is so screechy. Quite annoying. Someone notices that an axe is real and quite sharp, too. Hmmm. That seems dangerous. I think of Chekhov’s axiom about a gun.

Suddenly, during a break in filming, a severed arm is thrown into the room. Ha, ha! Just a joke? Crew members fooling around? It looks VERY real. And where did everybody else disappear to? Oh, oh!

It’s difficult to write much about One Cut of the Dead without spoiling the whole thing. Have I already written too much? There are reviews floating around that spoil many of the surprises and as time goes on there will be more still.

I’ll just say that this film is divided into three parts, with the third part being fall-off-your-chair funny. There are pokes at actors, fussy, passive-aggressive co-workers (“I SENT you an email!”), plot holes, zombie tropes, etc. One Cut of the Dead is also a fond tribute to family, team work, creativity, inventiveness, filmmaking in general, low-budget filmmaking in particular, the spirit of “the show must go on,” and much, much more. Well worth seeking out.

It was a treat to watch One Cut of the Dead with the famously enthusiastic Fantasia audience. There were lots of laughs and cheers. Actress Harumi Shuhama was among the crowd favourites, and many of those cheers were for her. Her character, makeup lady Nao, has so many (previously unknown) useful talents.

ONE CUT OF THE DEAD
2017
97 minutes long
In Japanese with English subtitles
Written, directed and edited by Shinichiro Ueda
Cast: Harumi Shuhama, Takayuki Hamatsu, Mao, Yuzuki Akiyama, Kazuaki Nagaya, Manabu Hosoi

cutline: Ryu Jun-yeol plays Rak, a quiet guy with nerves of steel who wants to avenge the death of his mother.

cutline: Cho Jin-woong plays policeman Jo Won-ho.

cutline: Here, Cho Jin-woong’s policeman character, Jo Won-ho, is in disguise as a dangerously unpredictable drug lord.

Believer is an edge-of-your seat experience, scarier than many horror movies! It’s a Korean remake, or shall we say, re-imagining, of Drug War (2012) from Hong Kong director Johnnie To.

(Drug War was equally nerve-racking, of course, but co-writers Chung Seo-kyung and Lee Hae-young have changed several aspects for their version. Bear in mind, too, that Drug War was shot in Mainland China, where authorities insist on a “crime does not pay” message.)

Policeman Jo Won-ho (Cho Jin-woong) has been chasing a powerful drug king-pin, the mysterious Mr. Lee, for more than two years. He hasn’t got very far in all that time, because no one knows what Mr. Lee looks like, and many people pretend to be Lee to trade on his fame and prestige.

Things start picking up after a fatal explosion in one of Mr. Lee’s drug labs. The lone survivor, a young man named Rak (Ryu Jun-yeol), wants revenge because his mother was among the people killed in that explosion. He agrees to help the police catch Mr. Lee.

Jo Won-ho goes undercover and impersonates a big-time drug buyer, Mr. A, and then a drug manufacturer, Mr. B, in back-to-back hotel meetings, with barely a chance to change clothes, let alone catch his breath, in between. I am calling these guys Mr. A and Mr. B for the sake of simplicity, they do have other names in the film.

(Jo Won-ho meets buyer Mr. A at a hotel, while pretending to be manufacturer Mr. B, with a team of cops in a nearby room recording it all from a microphone in Jo Won-ho’s watch and a camera on Rak’s tie pin. THEN, the cop pretends to be Mr. A, and acts just as crazy as Mr. A did, and that’s plenty crazy, when he meets the REAL Mr. B. Got that?)

Mr. A (played by Kim Joo-hyuk) is right out of his gourd, from sampling the merchandise, I guess, and could easily kill Jo Won-ho and Rak, by accident or just for fun, at any minute, which makes the already tense atmosphere almost unbearable. The cop keeps his cool with difficulty, while Rak seems to have nerves of steel. He knows sign language, too, which allows him to communicate with the “cooks” at the drug lab. Scenes with the three of them add some levity, because a sign language interpreter translates their conversation for the watching cops and for us. Who knew sign language had so many swear words?

Believer is full of twists, turns and surprises and worth checking out even for those who who have already enjoyed Johnnie To’s Drug War.

H-110 in the Hall Building was close to being full, the audience was in fine form and to further set the mood, we were all given a container of NongShim ramen as we walked in.

BELIEVER

2018
South Korea, in Korean with English subtitles
124 minutes
Directed by Lee Hae-young
Written by Chung Seo-kyung, Lee Hae-young
With: Cho Jin-woong, Ryu Jun-yeol, Kim Joo-hyuk, Kim Sung-ryung, Park Hae-joon

Cat films seem to have become a tradition at Fantasia. They’re certainly a tradition in Japan! As the title might suggest, The Travelling Cat Chronicles is both a cat film and a road movie, though the cat does not wander around by himself doing good deeds, like the dog in the long ago Littlest Hobo TV series. The film is based on a book by Hiro Arakawa.

Nana the cat rides in relative comfort in a car with a young man named Satoru. In a voice over, Nana explains that five years ago he was very badly injured after being hit by a car and he probably would have died if Satoru had not taken him to the vet.

Now the two are hitting the roads of Japan, driving many miles to visit friends from Satoru’s younger days to find a new home for Nana. Even though Satoru talks to Nana a lot, he has not explained why this is necessary, so poor Nana is feeling sad, angry and rejected. Nana talks to Satoru and to the audience, through the voice of actress Mitsuki Takahata. Nana is often quite cranky, unlike Akiko, the bubbly character Takahata plays in Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura. Satoru is played by Sota Fukushi, who is cuter than the cat.

Anyone who has watched enough Japanese films might guess why Nana will need a new home, but I’m not going to spell it out!

(About that name – it’s just one of the many things that Nana is cranky about. Even though he’s a male cat, Satoru gave him a name that is usually female, because the cat’s tail is hooked like the number seven and nana is one of the ways of saying seven in Japanese. Nana mutters that it’s not a very original way to choose a name. He has the same opinion about Hachi, the name of a beloved cat in Satoru’s youth.

Nana’s thoughts and Satoru’s chats with his friends lead us quite naturally to some flashbacks. We learn more about how Nana and Satoru met, that Satoru’s parents were truly nice people, while his childhood friend, Kosuke, had a selfish, demanding and nasty father. In fact, Kosuke’s father is still nasty, but (small spoiler!) after reviewing the past with Satoru, Kosuke decides that he won’t let his father push him around any more. There are more epiphanies to come.

Kosuke is willing to adopt Nana, but Satoru decides it’s not such a good idea after all, and he and Nana get back in the car. Time to visit the next candidate!

As the film continues, we learn more and more about Satoru’s life and his attitude toward it. Talk about making lemonade when life hands you lemons! Satoru would probably make a lemon meringue pie and it would be delicious, too! Satoru is always trying to extract something positive, even from sad, nay, tragic events. This extreme optimism might seem corny, or difficult to take seriously, but actor Sota Fukushi sells it.

A man and his cat, a boy and his cat. I can’t recall seeing or hearing those words often, have you? I’ve never heard someone called a “cat man” much less a “crazy cat man,” either. The Travelling Cat Chronicles gives men permission to enjoy cats, to love them, even, if such permission is actually needed. Viewers who don’t already have a cat might feel an urge to adopt one after watching this film.

Oh, bring some tissues (Kleenex®) for wiping your eyes, too.

Cat-related tidbit: Takuro Ohno, who plays Satoru’s friend Shusuke Sugi, has the leading human role in Neko Ninja, a 2017 film about a ninja who thinks that his missing father has shapeshifted into a cat.

The Travelling Cat Chronicles (Tabineko Ripoto)
2018
118 minutes
In Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by Koichiro Miki
Written by Emiko Hiramatsu, Hiro Arikawa
Cast: Yuko Takeuchi, Alice Hirose, Ryosuke Yamamoto, Takuro Ohno, Shota Taguchi, and the voice of Mitsuki Takahata