Directed
by Jôji (George) Iida, 2000, 132 min. starring Yosuke Eguchi,
Miwako Ichikawa, Yoshio Harada, Takashi Kashiwabara, Yukiko Okamoto,
Taro Suwa and Haruhiko Katô.
After
making the disastrous flop Rasen (the original
- and now somewhat notorious - sequel to Ring)
in 1999, it's really no wonder that Jôji
Iida decided to change his name to the not-very-well-disguised George
Iida, presumably to throw detractors of his style of film-making
off the scent. Hell, after making such a bomb, I'd have been tempted
to have my appearance altered by plastic surgery as well, to be
on the safe side. However, what is a surprise is that Iida
also decided to remain within the horror genre of moviemaking and
continue along his original path, despite having suffered many,
many proverbial slings and arrows from outraged moviegoers. And
while Another Heaven was reasonably well-received, both
critically and at the Japanese box office in 2000, it was hardly
what you'd call a groundbreaking movie, and certainly didn't prove
Iida's original detractors from the time of Rasen wrong.
The
real problem with this movie, for me, is the plot: it's a confused,
troubled and ill-thought-out mixture of ideas borrowed circumspectly
from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's amazing work of art
Cure, and then liberally topped up with tired, creaky stuff
that comes straight out of such classic oldies as Invasion of
the Bodysnatchers, The Hidden, and even Alien.
In addition to that mess of mismatched concepts - a cannibalistic
alien police drama from the future, indeed!- Iida wants to be seen
to be portraying the movie as some big-issue morality tale, and
how does he go about doing this? He throws in the usual Oliver Stone-esque
attacks on violence in the media (innovative!); but because he simply
can't find anything more profound and insightful to say about it
other than "oh, violence in the mass media, it's a bad
thing and it makes some people do bad things too", he
just drops it like your proverbial hot potato... just as
he just dropped things from the original Ring
because he couldn't find any way of fitting them into the Rasen
structure.
Frankly,
I continue to find Iida a lazy, not particularly perceptive director
with shaky storylines and no sense of visual aesthetics, and Another
Heaven is no exception. Merely filling the screen full of male
eye candy (in the comely shape of three mega-pin-ups, Yosuke
Eguchi, the
well-known J-pop star/actor Takashi Kashiwabara (whose brother Shuuji
put in an excellent performance in Long
Dream), and a bizarre and shameful under-usage of the talented
young actor Haruhiko Katô) and half-naked young women, does
not make for good visuals, unless you're shooting something which
ain't horror.
Synopsis
“Something evil ran from her head…”
Another Heaven opens
with the Tokyo police being called in to investigate a particularly
nasty murder scene in a small apartment; the case is being handled
by a young detective called Manabu Hayase (Yosuke
Eguchi,
who puts in a fair, although somewhat pedestrian, performance) and
his partner, an old, cynical, world-weary detective (why are old
cops always cynical and world-weary? Is it the law, or
something? ;-D) called Tobitaka (played, well, competently by
Yoshio Harada).
However,
when the rest of the squad appear on the scene (and honestly, I'd
be surprised if the actual Tokyo police force really do bear this
much resemblance to the Keystone Kops), along with an elderly forensic
doctor called Akagi, they discover the digusting facts of the case:
the victim's neck was broken, his head was cut open, and the murderer
had removed his brain in order to cook up a special order of brain
stew. And unfortunately, this is not the only case: it seems that
a rash of cannibalistic serial killings have been taking place all
over the city, each with exactly the same motive. Clearly the killer
has been reading 101 Delicious and Nutritious Recipes for the
Human Cranium.
Naturally,
the police are pretty flummoxed, not to mention nauseated, and since
the media have got ahold of the story, they're pretty keen to arrest
the serial killer as soon as possible, as a rising sense of panic
is gripping the airwaves about violence on TV and in the movies
inciting real-life acts of evil (ooh, ironic!). Tobitaka's (slightly
sexist) theory about the killer's profile is that the mysterious
cannibal has to be a fairly powerful man weighing about 100kg, with
a grip of 150kg - this would be the absolute minimum requirement
for someone to be able to break an adult male's neck with their
bare hands.
In
the meantime, while the police are frantically searching for clues,
Manabu gets a chance to pop home to his apartment for some rest,
whereupon he is disturbed by his sometime-girlfriend Asako (Miwako
Ichikawa), an ex-convict cabaret-club hostess with an amazing,
almost uncanny talent for coming up with all the right answers,
who, on studying all the facts of the case, draws a particularly
wild conclusion: that the killer is in fact a beautiful woman with
superhuman powers! (And she could tell all that by the fact that
the killer likes to cook. More downright sexism! Pah! ;oP)
Of
course, it's not long until Asako's incredible theory is proved
to be 100% right: while investigating the seventh murder in the
series, of a voluntary teacher of the mentally handicapped, Manabu
and Tobitaka accidentally stumble across an eye-witness to the murder,
a young lad who was hiding in the closet during the whole thing.
He tells them that the serial killer is in fact, yes, you guessed
it, a beautiful woman with superhuman powers, who just happens to
also be a psychopathic, nymphomaniac cannibal by the name of 'Chi-chan',
who only feasts on the brains of people who have 'evil thoughts'
because apparently it makes them tastier.
And,
isn't it just ever so lucky, Manabu finds a sketch of the
killer hidden behind the wall in the school. So he and his partner
go to check the missing persons files back at the police headquarters,
and find their prime suspect listed there: Chizuru Kashiwagi (Yukiko
Okamoto), a college student who went mysteriously missing three
days before the first murder took place.
But
on the other side of town, the self-same predator Chizuru is sitting
in a bar, trying to pick up three men, presumably as ingredients
for her next culinary masterpiece. However, despite blood running
out of her eyeballs rather unattractively, that doesn't seem to
stop the men from taking her back to one of their apartments to
try to seduce her, even though the only thing she has on her mind
is the dish of the day. She manages with some ease to kill one of
the men off; the second intended victim is a little bit more on
the ball, though, and fetches her a mortal whack to the bonce with
a dumb-bell, before running off to alert the police. However, the
third, a young chap called Kimura (Takashi
Kashiwabara),
is left cowering behind the toilet, waiting for the police... unluckily
for him, because Chizuru, dying from that fatal bash on the head,
spots her chance to continue her evil career...
Of
course, by the time the bumbling cops arrive, they find the murderous
woman dying on the floor, but make a shocking discovery: that she
doesn't have a brain either! And something strange has happened
to the eye-witness Kimura - he seems to have somehow been possessed
by Chizuru's evil spirit! However, after performing an autopsy on
Chizuru, Dr Akagi reveals a very important clue to Manabu: Chizuru's
brains weren't completely gone, but they had shrivelled up in a
corner of her skull, and full of ulcers, which would have caused
her such immense pain that she would have had to have taken handfuls
of narcotics even to be able to walk.
However,
soon Manabu starts to get plagued with phone calls from the new
perpetrator, Kimura, who leaves a cannibalised victim in a hotel
room as a "gift" for Manabu, killed in almost identical
fashion to the Chizuru murders... and just as the hapless detectives
make the grisly discovery, they receive a phone call from the murderer
- who's standing on the roof of the next-door building, taunting
them and showing off his superpowers.
But
why is Kimura - or more correctly, the evil spirit possessing Kimura
- particularly targeting Manabu? The reason is because the spirit
is under the impression that Manabu's personality is every bit as
evil as his own, despite being kept under restraint, and that the
only reason Manabu is a policeman is because he gets off on real-life
crime and gore... which is, to a certain extent, true. And during
the course of the chase, while Manabu tries to capture Kimura, the
cops actually do something right for once and shoot Kimura four
times.
But
even though that pretty much means the end for Kimura, who will
it possess once he buys the farm? Where the heck did it come from
in the first place? The spirit won't give up hunting what it thinks
is its "perfect carrier", Manabu, so who will it choose
to possess in order to get closer to him - Asako, Dr Akagi, the
Inspector, or somebody completely different? And how the hell can
it be stopped if even the death of its host carrier can't kill it?
Forgettable
and self-consciously gore-splattered images are teamed with a pretty
nothing soundtrack, and not even the all-round decent quality of
the acting can save the rubbishy dialogue and gaping plot-holes
of this film. And inventing a handy deus ex machina character
like Asako, a remarkable young lady ex-convict who, despite looking
and acting like a retarded 12-year-old, seems to be able to psychically
come up with all the right clues and answers in the police
investigation, just proves my point: Iida's plot-writing is so lame
that the only way he can get his daft policemen on the right track
is by having a character make miraculously correct guesses.
And in the current climate of super-sharp storylines in the genre,
that's simply unacceptable.
Still,
if it's brainless (literally, in most scenes ;-D) entertainment
you're after, you may enjoy Another Heaven: however, be
warned that it's really far too lengthy and ponderous to be a good
popcorn-and-beer flick. The movie clocks in at a frightening 2 hours
and 12 minutes long, thanks to a meandering middle section that
doesn't really go anywhere, a tedious drawn-out chase sequence,
and a hugely pompous and superfluous ending. But if you dig alien
cannibals, daft plotlines, buckets o' blood-and-brains, and bishonen
eye-candy, you might like it. I guess the best thing you can say
about it is that it's relatively mediocre. However, you'd probably
still be better off spending your cash on Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure
or Sion Sono's Suicide Circle if
you fancy a supernatural-type murder drama, because both of those
movies are infinitely superior products to Another Heaven.
Snowblood
Apple Rating for this film:
Entertainment value: 5/10
Chills: 0/10
Violence: 100/10
Braaaaiiins: everywhere, but particularly in the dish of
the day - you'll never want spaghetti carbonara again ;)
Explosions: just one big 'un/10
Gore: 200/10
Sexism and Homophobia: altogether offensively way too much for a
21st century film
Confusion: ?????/10
George Iida: you're not fooling me, matey!;-)
Litres of Tomato Ketchup: several major European ketchup lakes
***Recommended only if there's nothing better on telly***
Discuss this movie here at the Snowblood Apple Forums!
Another
Heaven Wallpaper
You can download this wallpaper here: [800x600]
[1024x768]
Wallpaper credit: Alex Apple, 2003
Snowblood Apple Filmographies
Jôji
Iida
Yosuke Eguchi
Yoshio Harada
Takashi
Kashiwabara
Miwako
Ichikawa
Yukiko Okamoto
Haruhiko
Katô
Tarô
Suwa
Links
http://www.culturedose.net/review.php?rid=10004535
- Mike Bracken's indepth and smart review of the movie
http://www.amazing-colossal.com/anotherheaven.html
- another fine review, and one I certainly agree with
http://www.nixflix.com/reviews/anotherheaven.htm
- NixFlix give it their best shot, with technical specs and cast/crew
info
http://www.filmmonthly.com/Video/Articles/AnotherHeaven/AnotherHeaven.html
- Del Harvey's review with some small images from the movie
http://www.swan.channel.or.jp/swan/software/line_up/anotherheaven/index.html
- friends and neighbours, be ready to be shocked... this is a game
based on the movie. UHHH?! [Japanese only]
http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/wscolor/data/29852.html
- we're not kidding you, see?!
http://www.moviesonline.com.sg/owa_...%20Heaven&show_type=archived
- a small selection of viewer opinions at Movies Online - watch
out for some disastrous spoilers, though - don't say I
didn't warn you :-(
http://www.kfccinema.com/reviews/horror/anotherheaven/anotherheaven.html
- loads of images and a positive review...
http://www.upcominghorrormovies.com/reviews/asian/anotherheaven.html
- ...and UHM liked it much better than we did, too :-)
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