Sakuya: Slayer of Demons
Director: Tomoo Haraguchi
Year: 2000
Rating: 6.0
Do you ever put
on a movie and about ten minutes into it you realize you are not at all into
the film and don't really want to watch it but are just too damn lazy to
turn it off and find another one to watch. That was me with this film. It
just seemed too close to being a children's fantasy movie about demons and
a young female demon slayer. It felt like a live action anime. Well, I kept
watching as inertia held me tied to my couch like a kidnap victim. Fortunately,
the chocolate was close by. Then as the film moves on I began to think this
isn't so bad after all. Kind of fun for a children's movie. A children's
movie that would have given me nightmares at ten years old. Its main plus
are the special effects by Shinji Higuchi which incorporate CGI, men in demon
costumes and miniatures to create some enjoyable scenes. He did the fx on
a bunch of well-known films - Peacock King from Hong Kong, the three Gamera
films of the 1990s, Princess Blade and the visually astonishing Pistol Opera.
Then he began directing - Attack on Titan 1 and II and Shin Godzilla. So
a good resume and really the only reason to watch this film.
It is 1707 - a fine year as I recall - but
Mount Fuji has exploded because it does that whenever man has become too
corrupt. It should be exploding any day now. It spews out all sorts
of demons and Yoshiaki Sakaki, Lord of Bizen (Hiroshi Fujioka) has to bring
out the Vortex sword and start killing them all. There is a drawback with
this sword - it sucks the lifeforce out of the wielder and only the blood
of humans can revitalize it. He is on his last Demon, a Kappa - "depicted
as green, human-like beings with webbed hands and feet and a turtle-like
carapace on their back.". But he has hit his limit and the candle back home
literally goes out but before doing so he hands off the sword to his teenage
daughter, Sakuya (Nozomi Andô) and she finishes the job. In the bushes
she hears a cry - a baby Kappa - oh so cute - so she decides to raise it
as her brother, Taro, as irritating a child actor as ever put on screen.
In six months he grows to the size of a ten year old boy and looks completely
human other than his round bald spot on his head which shows his green scalp.
There are more demons to kill and off Sakuya
goes with two master ninjas and Taro. The question is can you really take
the demon out of a demon. The Spider Queen tries to bring him over to the
Kingdom of Darkness and sings him a lullaby. She is rather nice in her human
form. When in her spider form she looks like David Bowie in Labyrinth and
I kept hoping she would break into Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
On the way to the Queen, Sakuya has to deal with a puppeteer who has turned
girls into marionettes, an old lady who is a two-tailed cat demon, a few
other demons and passes by a Yokai Party with all our favorite characters
from the Yokai films of the 1960s. Very cool seeing our old friends. She
tells Taro these are good demons. We don't kill them. Phew. I was worried.
So by the end I was glad that inertia had set in and I watched it all the
way through. A fun if silly Yokai fantasy.
