Expanding on his homonymous short from 2021, Kenichi Ugana has now come up with a feature version of “Visitors”, which has added two more arcs in the initial story.
“Visitors Complete Edition” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative
In the first, Haruka, Nana, and Takanori visit the house of Sota, a band member who has not given any sign of life for quite some time. The house looks particularly run-down with newspapers covering every window, while Sota seems even more strange, looking a mess and acting like nothing is going on. As he calmly offers them tea, one of the girls steps into a green goo and transforms into a head-spinning, bloodthirsty demon. The trio feel death coming upon them, but Haruka takes things in her hands.
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In the second arc, the owner of a bar has kidnapped a passerby and brought him to his bar, with the monsters eventually also showing their ugly face. In the third, it seems that monsters are kind of coexisting with humans, although the enemies to the latter still exist, with Haruka, who has become a chainsaw monster herself, becomes the protagonist once more.
As we have mentioned in the review of the short: Kenichi Ugana “plays” with two aspects. The first one focuses on hikikomori, with Sota acting like an archetypical one, in a fashion, though, that is the main source of comedy in the short, as his disconnect from what is happening around him is actually hilarious, particularly in way Ugana uses his presence for jump-scares. The second is the survival horror one, with the director building the terror gradually, first solely through sound, and then through both sound and image, as the movie takes a rather bloody, but also absurd and still funny turn.
Visitors-Complete Edition -trailer from 株式会社Vandalism on Vimeo.
The additional arcs add even more aspects. The concept of immigration and the alienation of foreigners frequently is hinted upon, with Ugana also touches upon the whole idea of racism throughout. Furthermore, music becomes a central factor, with the punk sounds of ILA MORF OEL and Keefar becoming a central part of the narrative, adding both to humor and the grotesqueness here, but definitely in the entertainment the movie offers. Particularly the scenes that function as music videos are bound to stay in mind, also due to the accomplished editing of Masashi Komino, which results in a very fitting fast pace overall.
The prowess of Miyuki Wakamatsu's VFX, which result in buckets of goo and blood, in an approach that can only be described as grotesquely hilarious, is quite evident throughout, but special mention should also be given to the characters that appear here, inspired by movies like “Tokyo Gore Police” and even “Walking Dead”. The Chainsaw girl in particular, and the way Ugana plays with her preposterousness (having her work a field for example) is only matched by the mistress with the two chained sumo wrestlers, in yet another memorable image of the film. Lastly, Shiho stands rather out in the role of Haruka, both as a human and a monster.
“Visitors Complete Edition” is definitely messy and evidently low budget, but is also rather fun, and one of those movies that will find much appeal among fans of cult cinema.
