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1997(1st) ~ 2024(28th)
Strange Homage
TAKENAKA Naoto
Japan2008 115 min 35mm C Korean Premiere
‘A high school girl meets a samurai zombie.’ Yup! Zombie fares, after evolving and creating numerous variants over the past few years, put high school girls and samurais together in Yamagata Scream. Taking on this incredibly amusing assumption is TAKENAKA Naoto, a master comedy director. Samurai warriors and their subordinates who were slain 800 years ago resurrect as zombies when the townsfolk exhume their bodies to pursue theme park construction. Fighting against them, and some of the folks who already turned, are high school girls from Tokyo on their history-class excursion. Their “weaponry” against the monsters includes a cell phone, a modern high school girls’ must-have item. Some of the scenes are downright preposterous as well as hilarious: the girls amplify the electronic waves to attack the zombies, and people simply turn into the undead when the liquids spawned from the samurais hit their faces. But the nonsense represents some of the throbbing issues in Japan — girls dismiss the rusty armor-clad warriors like they’re in the middle of some kind of “cospre,” while the samurai undead are gazing at them with such puzzled look on their faces. The image could indicate the stark contrast between teenagers and adults of modern-day Japan, going beyond a mere distinction between the living and the dead, between the past and the present. NARUMI Riko plays the part of the high school student/heroine in her first horror gig, as the director himself plays several parts including a mean samurai, showing off his comedy genius. (MO Eun Young)