Top 10 Film of 2023
Visitors review.
I’m not going to lie…this is a weird one. Streaming on Screambox November 21
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Visitors
Directed by Ken’ichi Ugana
Starring Shiho, Kento Miura, Saki Hirai, Keisuke Nomura, Haruki Itabashi, Ryûta Endô and Lloyd Kaufman
Visitors Review
I don’t know how to even start explaining Visitors. Sixty-one minutes of chaos? The strangest little movie to come across the Screambox catalog since All Jacked Up and Full of Worms (but much, much better)? A zombie filled fever dream? Hilarious? Gore-soaked fun effects? Brilliantly mad? I’m not sure I’m going to find the right combination of words to properly review the experience that Visitors gives you. But I can confidently start by using the words “all of the above”.
Visitors originated as a short film in 2021. Director/madman Ken’ichi Ugana has fleshed it out by adding new segments and expanding the strange world he created. The segments are separated by two distinct time jumps…which are almost as interesting as the crazy segments themselves. Because Ugana’s world doesn’t just expand…it evolves. What begins as a contained madness of zombie fervor and aloofness changes over the course of time. We don’t watch it change…we jump into an already changed world. An entire movie could be made about what Visitors doesn’t show you. Though, leaving the gaps for your mind to fill in works incredibly well too.
It begins simply enough. A trio of young people looking for their missing bandmate, Sota. They find him pent up in his residence…cut off from the outside world and acting extremely oddly. This is the last time anything about Visitors will be simple enough. Things become unhinged quickly. They stay unhinged for the remainder of the film’s brief runtime.
Getting into the specifics of what happens in Visitors feels like a waste of time. You need to see it for yourself. Yes, it involves possession…but thanks to Ugana’s wildly comedic view and the already mentioned time jumps…labeling it as such would do it a disservice. This is a wild, messy, hilarious examination of the corners of a world gone mad.
The first jump takes us nine months into the future…the second jumps us another year forward. There is more to these choices than simply separating the three individual (though connected) segments. Connected by characters…connected by infection…and connected by chainsaws.
If you are hoping for an explanation for everything that is going on…you’re in luck. Kind of. There is a surprising resolution to the whole ordeal. It’s not unexpected due to the narrative choice…but to the perspective that we inevitably end up taking to it. The world in Visitors changes in a way that I’ve ever quite seen before. At least, that is, the way that Ugana does it. He changes our perspective with it. It’s an incredibly effective method of storytelling. What grounds us in a world of madness isn’t what we expect…even if the answer we are looking for is.
I’ve purposely avoided discussing what happens from segment to segment in Visitors for a couple of reasons. Not only does it deserve to be viewed as cold as possible…but the actual content, fun as it is, isn’t the thing that you’ll walk away thinking about. And make no mistake, this is an incredibly fun movie. Each of the three distinct segments goes wild by the end. But its Ugana’s evolving world…the one he drops us into at different stages of its metamorphosis…that is most interesting.
What makes Visitors such a winner is that you never need to think about any of that to enjoy the hell out of it. It’s a bloody, unexpectedly hilarious, wild ride. One that you should take whether you just want to enjoy the view from the surface…or dig deeper into. This is one of the craziest movies of the year. From chainsaw hands to a Lloyd Kaufman cameo. Every moment of it rocks.
Scare Value
I’d be lying if I said I understood everything that was going on in Visitors. I’d also be lying if I didn’t tell you that I enjoyed every second of it. This is a weird, wild hour of entertainment. It needs to be seen more than explained.
4/5
Visitors Link
Streaming on Screambox November 21
