Sakuya: Slayer of Demons (2000)

How long has it been since I wrote about a yōkai movie? Clearly, far too long.

I’ve already written quite a bit about the long history of tokusatsu depictions of Japanese spirits and monsters, which bridge the traditional stories and the modern kaiju and kaijin material that take inspiration from them. Considering that deeply-rooted connection, you can understand why some tokusatsu production lifers would eventually choose to make something yōkai-related—and Sakuya: Slayer of Demons (Japanese subtitle Yōkaiden) is a prime example of just that. Director Tomoo Haraguchi’s “tokusatsu lifer” status is inarguable: he started out working on models and make-up as far back as Ultraman 80 in the early eighties, eventually working on to previous site subject Ultra Q The Movie and the the nineties Gamera trilogy (more recently, he has some credited design work on Shin Ultraman.) The movie he produced is a smaller scale project that showcases some of what classical effects could do in the new millennium, one set of traditions nestled within a story based on a much older set of traditions.

Shin Kamen Rider (2023)

The third of the Shin series, this one written and directed by Hideaki Anno solo, follows the general trends of the previous two by returning to the first incarnation of a massive tokusatsu institution and sussing out the meaning inherent within it. As in the Anno-written Shin Ultraman, the type of examination at heart of this update of Shotaro Ishinomori’s insect-themed, monster-battling superhero is entirely compatible with an equal amount of superfan-pleasing callbacks and repurposed imagery–even though I’m not as familiar with Kamen Rider as I am with Ultraman, I can see still see that this is all coming from a place of respect for the originators of the series, even if it’s not always as direct as the previous movie (less outright use of the original soundtrack, for example, although older tracks are remixed for key moments.)  Even more than in Shin Ultraman, I think Shin Kamen Rider’s delirious narrative momentum comes from its own visual and conceptual idiosyncrasies.

(A reminder: Shin Kamen Rider is not the follow-up to previous subject Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue. That two completely unrelated movies called Shin Kamen Rider could be released decades apart is one way to know just how long running and arcane this franchise is–another way you know is because Shin Kamen Rider isn’t even the first time Toei has put out a cinematic reboot of the 1971 Kamen Rider.)

Beowulf (1999)

The last time we went over an adaptation of Beowulf, it was John Gardner’s Grendel, a very intentional reversal of the poem that made the monster the protagonist. I think it’s about time we studied a more straightforward re-interpretation, and so I went for the most obvious one: the 1999 techno-medieval movie version starring Christopher Lambert. What, were you expecting something different?

Shot in the backwoods of Transylvania, this Beowulf looks akin to a Renaissance Fair that was sub-themed around the late nineties, a world of castles and battle axes that also includes smokestacks, winding gears and machinery, and some stylish jackets and tops to go along with the royal robes and peasant rags. From the raging techno/industrial/metal score—including songs from Fear Factory, Anthrax, KMFDM, and many others—that ramps up to numerous fight scenes full of clashing steel and ninja flips (would you believe that Mortal Kombat producer Lawrence Kasanoff was involved?), you really get the sense that this is a bare knuckle attempt to make that musty old poem into a hardcore actioner for the fifteen-year-old boy audience, like a even less mannered and subtle version of Brotherhood of the Wolf. I feel that a movie that opens with a unique, silhouette-based logo is very loudly announcing its own brazen approach to the material, and does it ever live up, or down, to those early promises.