Fresh off its world premiere at Fantastic Fest, Visitors possesses SCREAMBOX. The Japanese splatterfest has drawn comparisons to Evil Dead, The Exorcist, and The Toxic Avenger.

I’m not going to lie to you; I have no idea how to review this movie.

Visitors, the 2021 Japanese horror flick written and directed by Kenichi Ugana, was originally a 17 minute short, at least based on what little info I can find on it. In 2023, the movie was just about tripled in length and released as a “full-length” feature.

But what is the movie about?

Well, on an incredibly broad level, it’s about an infection of Evil Dead style monsters loosing from the home of a Japanese boy named Sota, and the Man Vs Monster world that comes in its wake.

To narrow the film down a bit… it’s kinda/sorta about the friendship that arises between one Deadite and one loner musician. The details are not important. Mostly because the details barely exist.

Visitors is just an endless bombast on the senses from its start until its absurd, nonsensical end. Wait, that’s not fair. It implies the rest of the movie WASN’T nonsense.

With little else to discuss regarding the story and direction of what little plot there is, let’s get straight into the Ups and Downs and see what sense we can make of this little picture!

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS FOR VISITORS

+To be honest, even at 60 minutes, there’s a tighter 50-55 minute flick to be found in here, but I won’t quibble. Ugana recognized the story he had to work with, and he kept it entirely manageable and did not let his passion for what he was doing override his better judgment. This being more a collection of scenes and ideas, Ugana gave himself a sensible timeframe in which to make his movie, and he stuck to it. And we’re all better off for it. I can tell you my grade would have depreciated substantially if this had stretched to 90 minute.

+Visitors is non-stop What-The-Fuck-ery from pretty much the word go. Every few minutes, it lulls you into thinking it is telling a story and might have the skeleton of a plot narrative, but then everything flips on its head. And you realize Ugana was more interested in making badass, silly, brutal, violent, musical, absurdist moments than he was in making a film.

I laughed at Visitors. I applauded what it was doing. I even occasionally found it all to be a touch, well, adorable. It’s unlike much else, even as far as Evil Dead inspired romps go.

-This is about as “Not For Everyone” as movies get. I really dig it, but if you told me it turned you off and you gave it a 0/5, I’d just nod and say “Yeah, that makes sense”. You have to not only appreciate camp and abject nonsense to fall into Visitors; you have to appreciate exactly what Ugana’s wavelength is. I watched a movie earlier this year called Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder In Hell. It’s another Japanese Evil Dead homage, but even that–even BLOODY MUSCLE BODYBUILDER IN HELL–is more accessible to the layperson than Visitors.

-I’m not sure where to even go with a second down here. I mean, on an objective “How does this work as a movie” level, I could point out that the story is silly, the acting is sub-par, and the characters make mind-numbingly dumb decisions. There are things brought up out of nowhere that don’t matter at all. On a functional level, Visitors fails and fails hard.

But then again, if it did those things “right” (or should I say, in a more customary manner), then the movie wouldn’t be Visitors. And we’d all be worse off for it.

OVERALL

I had an absolute blast with Visitors, as I’m positive everyone involved in making it did. Except for maybe whoever was in charge of cleaning up all of the fake blood and puke. If you can stand your movies to be so off-center that they are falling over themselves, give this one a chance.

4.5 stars out of 5