Skip to content

Quirky, icky yakuza horror

Gozu is an aggressively idiosyncratic Japanese movie from Takashi Miike that combines the quirky grotesquerie of a David Lynch film with the viscous bio-horror that is a David Cronenberg signature. Oh, brother! And I mean that in every sense of the expression. For in Gozu, an example of what cultists call extreme cinema, a tousled yakuza (gangster) named Minami kills Ozaki, an eccentric and paranoid colleague who has mentored him like a sibling. For much of the film the corpse of this "brother" disappears only to reincarnate in the form of a sexy female who tries to seduce Our Antihero.

    by Carrie Rickey, INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC
    Published 

Gozu is an aggressively idiosyncratic Japanese movie from Takashi Miike that combines the quirky grotesquerie of a David Lynch film with the viscous bio-horror that is a David Cronenberg signature. Oh, brother! And I mean that in every sense of the expression.

For in Gozu, an example of what cultists call extreme cinema, a tousled yakuza (gangster) named Minami kills Ozaki, an eccentric and paranoid colleague who has mentored him like a sibling. For much of the film the corpse of this "brother" disappears only to reincarnate in the form of a sexy female who tries to seduce Our Antihero.

It is perhaps fitting that this shaggy-dog shocker opens with a scene in which the demented Ozaki claims that a Chinese crested (a lap dog as high-strung as a Chihuahua) is a yakuza attack pooch and then proceeds to neutralize the yappy little canine. The movie goes downhill from there.

Feral behavior is the theme of this film named for the creature with a cow's head and man's body, which makes a nightmare appearance here. If it's true that the Gozu is the gatekeeper of Hell, then you know what this movie is.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey

at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.

Gozu

* (out of four stars)

Directed by Takashi Miike, written by Sakichi Sato, distributed by Pathfinder Pictures. With Hideki Sone, Sho Aikawa and Kimika Yoshino. In Japanese with English subtitles.

Running time: 2 hours, 9 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (nudity, sex, violence, gore)

Playing at: The Roxy