London Film Festival: Yakuza Apocalypse

Takashi Miike's vampire yakuza movie has some great ideas, but overall it's a narrative and conceptual mess from the director of Audition and Ichi the Killer

★★
Film Review by Rachel Bowles | 19 Oct 2015
Film title: Yakuza Apocalypse
Director: Takashi Miike
Starring: Hayato Ichihara, Yayan Ruhian, Riko Narumi, Lily Franky, Reiko Takashima

In research for this review of Takashi Miike's Yakuza Apocalypse (★★) we read time and time again that this film is only for hardcore fans of Japanese cinema’s enfant terrible. As pretty passionate devotees of the prolific auteur’s work, especially his incredible genre deconstructions like Audition, One Missed Call and 13 Assassins, we have to respectfully disagree.

Within the narrative and conceptual mess that is Yakuza Apocalypse there are interesting ideas (yakuza as vampires, vampires as comedic comic book villains, both caught in Nietzschean eternal recurrence) and there are undeniably interesting moments of beauty, comedy and cinematographic excellence – Miike is still a great filmmaker after all.

There are characters, scenes and jokes that only Miike’s visionary imagination could conjure up. For example, the 'world’s toughest terrorist' as a furry frog who swiftly dispatches opponents through comically expert martial art skills, who doubles as an allusion to those very Japanese traumas and cultural references of Godzilla, volcanoes and nuclear war.

Yakuza Apocalypse is thus a frustrating watch for all its lost potential, though the kind of narrative constraint needed to make it watchable in the traditional sense would probably stamp out Miike’s unhinged creativity.

Perhaps the lowest and laziest point of the film is when Miike links vampirism to rape and then uses retroactive consent to justify the vampire bite/rape of a prostitute and her madam. As a counter to the whores, a Madonna character is also present to offer up her angelic blood (yakuza and criminal blood is disgusting and innutritious). It’s creepy and ill advised at best, misogynistic and pro-eugenics at worst.

If you want to enjoy Yakuza Apocalypse for its snippets of inspiration, we suggest a Baudrillardian form of watching: flick it on and off between late night channel hopping or watch scenes decontextualised through YouTube.

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