MUTANT MAYHEM. Mutant Girls Squad, a film about a teenager who
discovers she has deadly mutant powers and joins a group of similar girls to
seek revenge on the humans who have persecuted them, is screening Friday,
February 25 as part of the Portland International Film Festival’s "PIFF
After Dark" series. (Photo courtesy of the Northwest Film Center)
From The Asian Reporter, V21, #04 (February 21, 2011), page 15.
Gore-obsessed Japanese cult film directors create Mutant Girls Squad
Mutant Girls Squad
Directed by Tak Sakaguchi, Noboru Iguchi, and Yoshihiro
Nishimura
Produced by Yoshinori Chiba, Kazuo Kato, Toshiki Kimura,
and Gen Sato
Screening February 25 at Portland’s Cinema 21, 616 N.W.
21st Avenue
By Sarah Eadie
The Asian Reporter
Mutant Girls Squad is the self-indulgent vision of Tak Sakaguchi (Samurai
Zombie), Noboru Iguchi (The Machine Girl), and Yoshihiro
Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police). The three directors met at the 2009
New York Asian Film Festival. Over drinks, they discovered a shared love for
over-the-top bloodshed and mutated beauties. They decided on a plot and each
began working on a third of the movie. When their work was brought together,
Mutant Girls Squad was born.
The collaboration features Yumi Sugimoto as Rin, a typical teenage
Japanese schoolgirl … or so it seems. Rin has loving parents at home, a
cruel bully at school, and a pain in her arm that just will not quit.
After a day of merciless teasing and an ominous trip to the school nurse,
Rin returns home to find her parents holding her birthday cake. As they
celebrate her 16th birthday, her father unbuttons his shirt to reveal a set
of revolting growths sticking out from his body — he is a mutant. Rin
recoils in horror, but her father’s explanation is cut short by a hail of
bullets shot from the nose guns of government soldiers.
Seeing her father and mother killed triggers a primal rage in Rin. Her
sore arm transforms into a dangerous looking claw. The government soldiers
try in vain to wound her, but Rin leaps about with superhuman strength and
manages to escape.
Rin’s subsequent stop at a local mall sets the tone for the rest of the
film. Her grief over the loss of her parents fuels a treacherous rage.
Scenes of graphic violence flood the screen in a torrential bloodbath.
Unlike American horror flicks Saw and Hostel, the gore in
Mutant Girls Squad has a playful quality to it. Sakaguchi, Iguchi, and
Nishimura use violence to entertain the audience, not torture it.
Rin joins a group of fellow mutants led by androgynous Kisaragi (played
by director Sakaguchi himself), who is hellbent on destroying the human race
and trains the girl mutants to be killing machines. One by one they embark
on kamikaze missions. Rin recognizes Kisaragi’s abuse of power and
influence. She convinces her adorable, tentacled friend Yoshie (Suzuka
Morita) and her world-weary fighting instructor Rei (Yuko Takayama) to join
forces and fight against Kisaragi.
The movie goes back and forth between parodying and paying homage to
Japanese culture, American culture, and the slasher genre. One villain is a
dead ringer for a demented Astro Boy, Kisaragi’s character bears more than a
passing resemblance to the late Michael Jackson, and a particularly gory
kill references Ruggero Deodato’s 1980 horror film Cannibal Holocaust.
Sakaguchi, Iguchi, and Nishimura seem to be toying with more than just
cultural differences. Tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, the three
directors mockingly exploit our human obsession with the grotesque and
outstandingly beautiful female mutants, towering humans fused to horrible
monsters, a severed head on a birthday cake communicating from beyond the
grave.
Ultimately, it’s hard to decide whether Mutant Girls Squad is
meant to have something for everybody or nothing for anyone. Fans of the
genre will doubtless be pleased, but for first-time adventurers into the
world of modern Japanese fantasy-slasher films, Mutant Girls Squad’s
blood lust and elusive plot may be too much to stomach. Are you up for it?
Mutant Girls Squad is screening as part of the Portland International
Film Festival’s "PIFF After Dark" series on Friday, February 25 at 11:30pm
at Cinema 21, located at 616 N.W. 21st Avenue in Portland. To order advance
tickets, call (503) 276-4310. For more information, call (503) 221-1156 or
visit <www.nwfilm.org>.
|