Films That Witness Madness

review

ANOTHER HEAVEN

If I learned anything from ANOTHER HEAVEN it's that it doesn't take much to make a Japanese cop puke their guts out. All it takes it a dead body. Any dead body will do. Whether it'd be the body of a man whose brains have been scooped out and turned into stew or the body of a man lying virtually untouched on the hood of a car, the mere sight of a corpse will send a Japanese police officer running for the bathroom or gagging in the streets. After sitting through the first twenty minutes of ANOTHER HEAVEN, with its dozens of cops running through the streets barfing, I was convinced that I was in for a comedy and, in a way, I was. But not the intentional kind.

Thankfully ANOTHER HEAVEN manages to right itself before collapsing completely into the realm of absurdity. A plot synopsis that doesn't reveal the identity of the villain - think JASON GOES TO HELL or Carpenter's THE THING or THE FIRST POWER or... ahh fuck it, it's a alien/spirit/entity/thingy that has taken the form of water. All the better to seep into a person's ear and possess their brain(!).

Did I lose you? No? Good. Moving on...

A couple of hard-nosed cops are investigating the scene of a rather strange crime. The victim has had his neck broken and brains removed - cue barfing cops. Very soon, similar crimes are popping up all over the city - cue barfing cops. Manabu - the cool, bad boy cop with the hair cut to prove it - gets a clue from his cute, obnoxious, ex-con girlfriend, Asako, that makes some sense to him. The killer has to be a woman. Why? Well, the killer has been cooking and eating the brains of the victims and only women can cook something as sophisticated as brains(!!).

Did I lose you now? No? Great. Moving on...

While investigating the latest murder, a teacher at a school for the mentally handicapped, Manabu and his partner Inspector Tobitaka discover a young man hiding in a closet. He has seen the whole thing happen. He tells them it was indeed a young woman who committed the murder. They even stumble across an amazingly lifelike drawing of the murderer. Looking through the missing persons database back at the station, Manabu and Tobitaka discover the woman's identity. She's a college student named Chizuru. Meanwhile, halfway across town, Chizuru is prowling the bars looking for someone to snack on. Despite the fact that she suddenly starts leaking blood from her eyes, she easily gets three men to take her home(!!!).

Still with me? Perfect. Moving on...

Chizuru manages to kill one of the men and break the jaw of the other - taking a good whack in the forehead with a dumb-bell in the process. The man with the broken jaw takes off running, leaving the last of the men alone, cowering in the bathroom. Mortally wounded, Chizuru decides to pass the evil along while she still can. When the cops arrive, they find Chizuru dead on the floor. Upon closer inspection, they find that her brains are missing - cue barfing cops. Manabu comforts the frightened man in the bathroom and everyone declares the case closed. During the autopsy of Chizuru's body, Tobitaka's doctor buddy, Akagi, makes a rather strange discovery. Chizuru's brains weren't missing. They had simply shrivelled up into a ulcer-ridden ball. But who cares? Case closed, right?

Wrong. A few days later, Manabu and Tobitaka are called to the scene of a crime by Kimura, the young man who had survived the earlier attack. He's left a present for Manabu in a hotel room, a dead woman with her brains scooped out. And, to make matters worse, Kimura has developed a very unhealthy obsession with Manabu. Oh, and superhuman powers...

I see you're still here! Good. I think that'll do.

You see where this is going, right? ANOTHER HEAVEN repeats this until about the last 25 minutes or so. Killer is on the loose, killer is killed, new killer shows up, chase, fight, chase... That's about the extent of ANOTHER HEAVEN in terms of plot development. But that's fine as ANOTHER HEAVEN isn't striving for anything serious or life-changing. It's a fast-paced little sci-fi flavored action flick with likeable characters and a definite verve. Is it profoundly stupid? Hell, yes, it is. But so what? It's entertaining enough in that b-movie way that you're likely to forgive all the sheer stupidity - is there any other way to describe an alien/spirit/entity/thingy that likes the taste of brains? - that comes flying your way.

Director/writer Joji Iida is most definitely not the most talented man in the world. Anyone that has seen RASEN knows of his obvious shortcomings. They're all on display here. The screenplay is filled with uncomfortable sexism - A woman can't rape a man! A woman can't be a killer! A woman is too weak for all those things! But she CAN cook! - and a smattering of homophobia. It's also telling that IIda couldn't think of any other way of forwarding his plot except to create a character like Asako who happens to right every single time she makes a wild guess about the killer. Simply put, Iida is not the most talented man in the J-horror community.

But he did make an entertaining little film with ANOTHER HEAVEN. I'll take a stupid sci-fi action flick with a parasitic water entity over yet another stupid horror flick with a vengeful, long-haired ghost of a little girl any day of the week - unless that film happens to be from Hideo Nakata. In that case, get this piece of shit outta my DVD player!

Recommended for b-movie lovers.

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