Zombie Command

Set in, you guessed it, Tokyo, we follow the antics of protagonists Mitsuo – confusingly referred to throughout as Micchan (Shô Aikawa) and the afro-sporting Fujio (Tadanobu Asano) as they escape the city from the recently reanimated dead in this Japanese ZomCom.

Fujio and Mitsuo are friends, cohabitants and colleagues who work (or rather, slack off) at a fire extinguisher factory. It is here that their journey begins.

A work-place Jujitsu training session is interrupted by the factory manager who proceeds to take his frustrations out on the follicly challenged Mitsuo. Fujio comes to his rescue but accidentally murders his boss. In order to avoid prosecution, they load the body into their van and head off to Black Fuji, a man-made mountain of waste that resides just outside of town, to dispose of the body. What they didn’t bank on was the vast quantities of chemical waste reanimating all the other bodies buried on the mountain.

They hit the road, heading north, fleeing the infested Tokyo. Along the way they ‘rescue’ Yoko (Erika Okuda) from a convenience store. During this daring rescue, Mitsuo gets nibbled on by one of the undead and, fearing he too will turn into a zombie, throws himself off of a bridge (inclusive of comedy sound effect) into the murky waters below.

Fast forward 5 years and a sense of order has returned to Tokyo. The wealthy have built a walled city within the city; where the rich are comfortable, the poor are slaves and the zombies are entertainment. Fujio must put his Jujitsu training to good use in order to survive and keep alive the memory of his fallen comrade.

Tokyo Zombie is a bizarre little movie. It’s clear that it draws some inspiration from the works of Takeshi Miike but it falls short of the quality of his films. For a zombie movie there is a distinct lack of zombies and a minimal amount of gore, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but this film needed it. Also, for a comedy, I would expect a few more laughs. Don’t get me wrong, there where times when I laughed (I might even stretch to ‘out loud’) but they were few and far between and weren’t enough to compensate for the time spent staring stony-faced at the screen. I can only assume that some elements get lost in translation.

The film started promisingly enough; within the first half an hour we’d had murder, a decapitation, 2 perverts and a lady zombie that munched on something a lot further down than a man’s brain (ladies – you can make your own jokes!). However it wasn’t long before the fun subsided. The plot is spread very thinly over 100+ minutes and I had trouble recounting the story for the purpose of this review – it was that memorable. There is a cool little animated scene mid-movie that recounts the building of the walled city. This is probably one of the better parts of the movie and the quirky animation style is quite aesthetically pleasing.

Tokyo Zombie, in title alone, promises a lot however it delivers little. When watching a Zombie Comedy I’d hope for both zombies and comedy and, in this reviewer’s opinion, this film had little of either. There are those that will disagree with me, there are many favourable comments floating around the Interweb for this movie, but Tokyo Zombie is bad – and not ‘so bad it’s good’ – just bad.

4 out of 10 Zombie Fingers