Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

That was an excellent one.

Load of rubbish!!

Expected more

Tenshu is imprisoned and sentenced to death. When he survives electrocution the government officials give him a choice to either be electrocute at a greater degree or agree to some experiments. He chooses the experimentation and is placed in a large metallic cell with a bad ass criminal who also survived the electrocution. They can have whatever the want in the room (within reason), but they can't leave. after a few days there meals are cut down to one per day and the room temp is set up too 100. After some more alarms are sounded at intervals so they can't sleep. One day a 'witch' come into their cell (albeit a glassed off portion) What happens next I'll let you find out. I may be in the minority here but I liked the build up, it was intriguing to me. Now if the payoff was half as good as the build up was I would have rated this so much higher.My Grade: C+ Media Blaster's 2 DVD set Extras: Disc 1) Director's Cut; Trailers for "Versus", "Aragami", "Attack the Gas Station", and "Deadly Outlaw Rekka" Disc 2) Theatrical Cut; Commentary with Hideo Sakaki, Ryuhei Kitamura, Sakaguchi Takuand Tsutomu Takahashi; Cast and crew interview; Making of; Original Trailer; and Promo Teasers

Between "Versus" and "Azumi", I was getting around to liking director Kitamura, but after this entry I'm not so sure anymore. It's got all the promise, but never lives up to it.A man is sent to the electric chair for the murder of his girlfriend's rapist. However, he survives the execution and is subsequently put into an experiment involving seedy government types, fellow prisoners, containment and a rather hostile alien entity trapped in a girl's body. It seems this entity only likes to latch onto the most blood thirsty host it can find, so death row inmates should make good subjects for government research. Oh, what will happen? Any and everyone who has sat through one or more Japanese sci-fi flicks should be able to predict who the alien will latch onto and what will happen once it does. Giving that is a moot point, the film doesn't get going until it happens. Unfortunately, it takes a LONG time before the story gets moving, before that viewers have to sit through dry, dull dialogue scenes ad nausea.Once the film finally takes off, it starts to have some fun. Guys with guns, super-powered fights, the works. It's just way too little, way too late to salvage much interest. Most viewers will not sit long enough to see things pick up, which is really too bad, there is some good sci-fi stuff later on.A note about the ending: I won't ruin anything, but I think watchers should know that like other films by Kitamura, the movie concludes, but the story doesn't have much of an ending. Make of it what you will.So many good ideas are wasted on dull story telling and limited conception. Worth a view only to hard-core J-film fanatics.6/10

Out of all the Kitamura movies I've seen, this is my least favorite. I liked it but its not his best in my opinion. Hideo Sakaki was of course good, but other than that the cast didn't push me either way. They were just there. I say it is misleading about the whole Cube reference because it was nothing like that movie, except if you take into account that they're in a cell. But it wasn't claustrophobic at all. ******THIS IS WHERE IT MIGHT GET SPOILERY!!!!******** As far as the Sakaki/Sakaguchi reunion went I was a little disappointed. I knew Tak would come in at the last part and I knew they would have an ending fight-scene, but I was looking forward to that. Heh, I was even looking forward to the cheesy make-up/body suit that he would have on; which I enjoyed btw. But what disappointed me was that there was no bantering. Tak uttered not a word and that took some of the luster away from the fight/reunion. Also, I felt robbed that Hideo wasn't the one to give him the death blow. What's worse is that he died from a gun shot wound! No! Ah, what a waste. I didn't find it terribly perplexing, like some of Kitamura's other works, but there's one thing that kept rolling around in my head: was Zeros an alien? I don't think he was. I think that the alien part of the story was the virus itself, but Zeros was a human previously who caught the disease and the results were what we saw, he was changed extensively and was absent of any kind of personality and that's what Tenshu would have become eventually. *********END OF SPOILERS***************It was an alright flick, I wouldn't pay the list price for it but it was good. Perhaps even good enough to own, watch with a buddy or two and perhaps even play Mystery Science Theatre.

The movie is based on a manga series created by Tutomu Takahashi and as usual in such cases 'the book was better'. I haven't enjoyed the movie at all, despite its unusual atmosphere, it is just too long. A good film consists of many elements and one of them is right pace, which this film is lacking. What struck me the most was decreasing quality of the special effects, as if they spent most of the money in the beginning and then tried to do the ending with whatever was left. Ah I forgot to mention the 'mutant from space' character, which was omitted in the comic book, that gave the final scenes a 'Dragon Ball' feel and only distorted the depth of the comic ending.