By Eric Ortiz (@EricOrtizG)
The Japanese movie Visitors (2023), directed by Kenichi Ugana, was part of Burnt Ends, the Fantastic Fest sidebar dedicated to “micro-budget outlier cinema.” The “complete edition” of Visitors that premiered at this festival is one hour long and is made up of three segments that give a peculiar and amusing twist to the classic horror monster outbreak.
Director Ugana said in an interview for the Fantastic Pavilion that the project started with his short film of the same name, produced in 2021 and screened at such festivals as Slamdance, Fantasporto and Tromadance. At the latter, Ugana met Troma leader Lloyd Kaufman, who has a cameo in the extended version of Visitors.
Ugana recalled that he owes his love for horror and splatter films to his mother: “She liked these kinds of movies, so since I was a little boy she showed them to me.” The director added that among the genre classics that influenced Visitors are Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973).
Visitors begins with a group of young people visiting the house of one of their friends, who doesn’t seem to be affected by the fact that supernatural things are happening there. This first segment soon heads into the realm of demonic possession, although the development does justice to the fame that the Japanese have when it comes to conceiving cinematic madness and absurdity. When asked about a noteworthy scene in which a possessed girl ends up being decapitated but it turns out that her head has little legs, Ugana commented: “I think in entertaining the audience, I wanted to make something that had never been seen before. That’s why I built the tiny legs.”
In the next chapter of Visitors, which takes place three months later, one of the female characters reappears, now with her arms replaced by chainsaws that she uses to deal with the monsters. Ugana stated that “first I did the short film, which is so extreme. We presented it, but there was so much more I wanted to put in. We had to add a second part, then I wanted bigger stuff. In most movies the heroine has to go and defeat the monsters, she always has a weapon. I wanted to add my own style to it.”
In the third part, which happens a year later, Ugana makes the zombie or demon “apocalypse” playful, for example we see the monsters playing jump rope but with the guts of one of them. They are happy creatures because Uganda preferred not to take “the traditional horror movie route. I want to go and meet my friends and make friends, so I would be the same with creatures or zombies. I love creatures. There are zombies out there who probably want to make friends.”
The brief appearance of the director of the original The Toxic Avenger (1984), Lloyd Kaufman, marks the potential end of the peace of these creatures. However, Visitors saves a couple of twists for the final part. There’s more weird stuff and even a touch of science fiction linked to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and aliens. “With everything that’s going on, the pandemic, climate change, earthquakes… I’m not going to spend time crying and being sad. I’m going to come up with things that I like and find enjoyable, and that are going to make me happy. I didn’t want a sad ending. The theme of this movie is: don’t think, dance!,” concluded Ugana.