Roots Search: Film Review

Title: Roots Search: Shokushin Buttai X
Writer: Michiru Shimada
Director: Hisashi Sugai
Year: 1986

Since the beginning of this review blog, I have seen a fair amount of anime, and the quantity I saw beforehand is greater still. In all this time, there aren’t many releases, be they series, film, OVA, manga or live action, that I would dismiss as being of no value whatsoever. There is a large amount of throwaway ecchi rubbish, but if a shows aim is to be throwaway ecchi rubbish, actually slamming it for being so seems redundant, as they are easily avoidable. What we have with Roots Search, however, is a 45 minute release which has pretentions of an intelligent philosophical debate, but fails to live up to any of what we could generously describe as its ‘promise’.

Before I explain why I think the film is a resounding brainsore, I will qualify my criticisms by acceding that 45 minutes is perhaps too short a time to have really gone into the ideas Roots Search proposes in a more challenging way, but I feel the film also fails to compromise successfully and instead makes a hash of everything.

I am no expert when it comes to sci-fi horror, but if horror scenes appear clunky and not at all frightening to someone who isn’t a horror enthusiast, then they are hardly fit for purpose. Bearing in mind that this film is over 20 years old, it is possible that these scenes would’ve appeared less obvious to an audience not used to the epic CGstravaganzas that abound today. Still, the premise isn’t, and wasn’t, a new one, and while I’m sure Roots Search was dismissed by some as an Alien rip-off, it seems a bit unfair that one film should have monopoly on the idea of ‘horror in space’. Roots Search is ‘horror in space’, but the reason that no one can hear them scream is not due to the vacuum of space, but due to the awfulness of the production. It is almost as awful as my analogy for how awful it is.

The horror scenes revolve around the psychic alien creature locating the characters’ guilty pasts and forcing them to relive or face up to them through the use of ‘horrifying’ apparitions. Like A Christmas Carol, except in space, with a lot more blood, and significantly less Yorkshire pudding. The uninspired set up for these scenes are further let down by the spectacularly awful visuals. When I say visuals I am not referring only to the poor quality of the animation, which is more or less forgivable bearing in mind the age of the production, and also that it was likely made on a shoestring budget, something which is also suggested by the oddly short running time. I am referring to the poor ideas behind the design of these scenes; the beginning of the alien’s intervention is always announced by a screen-filling shot of the aliens face (sideways mouth aaargh!), which is then replaced with the face of an individual from the character’s past, which is replaced with the alien, which is replaced by the individual, alien, person, alien, person, eeeeeh! All of this underpinned with the synthy whooshing and whooping of an angry child assaulting a Moog. Sorry, that’s probably not how they were made. It is also conceivable that it was a Yamaha. I can’t tell whether this was passé when it first came out, but by today such a scene is to be considered excruciating cheese, and at a planning meeting a suggestion for such a scene would be met with the relocating of the tantrum-throwing Moog-child into the personal space of the gibberling who had suggested such a thing.

The film is further burdened with ugly character design, which is perhaps a harsh claim that can’t really be substantiated because it is based solely on my taste, rather than an opinion formed (hopefully) rationally. Nevertheless, ugly character design. Have it. Scott, a blonde-haired fop, is modelled on a carrot that has been inflated, and heroic Johnny-come-lately Buzz is a bastardised version of an archetypal old-school anime hero. The female lead, Moira, is tousled and clueless, plodding around with her big puppy eyes and overlong sleeves, plugging away in the ‘helpless damsel’ tradition, looking for all the world like a gender-stereotyping analyst’s wet dream.

Heteronormativity is further pandered to in a scene where, being confronted with a significant amount of gore, Moira buries her face in Scott’s overlarge manly/carrot chest, as he nobly holds her and declares “That’s too gory for a young woman to have to see”. Which to me is a strange line, as it is embedded with the assumption that there is a level of gore that a young woman should have to see, though I imagine the level is ‘not very much gore’, or possible, ‘hardly any gore at all’. A second assumption is also there through contrast, which is that the level of gore is perfectly suitable for viewing by young men. Such as carrot chested Scott and lantern-jawed Buzz.

Gore is an important commodity in Roots Search, as it is used as a substitute for horror. Japanese horror, though this is generalising slightly, is known for its understatement and horror-through-mood approach, which contrasts with the mainstream American ‘holy shit isn’t this stabby man scary?!?!’ approach, which makes Roots Search’s approach even stranger. Not scared by the monster-apparition that’s chasing a crew member? No worries, we are about to impale him with a dozen girders. Through his face. The horror.

The pacing of the piece seems rushed, which is again to be expected and is likely evidence of an epic idea squashed into too short a slot, which still doesn’t excuse some of the blunders. Early on in the piece, the alien declares: “I will kill you all within two hours”, which is an oddly time-conscious outburst from a monster, and suggests an intelligence which is absent from the horrors he decides to visit. Further dialogue sillies come roughly a quarter of an hour into the piece, as Moira suddenly changes the topic of conversation apropos of nothing to discuss the reason of human existence. This conversation needs to occur in order to set up the alien’s story, but it is a grinding shift of focus from the rest of the piece up until that point. Harsh contrasts can be an effective dramatic technique, but in this instance it comes across as half-arsed and clunky. Characters also have a tendency to say each others names too often, which is slightly annoying and needless in such a short piece. Whether this is to engender empathy from the viewer or just a consequence of poor writing is unclear, though it fails to make me sympathise with Moira, Scott, Norman, Marcus or Buzz.

There’s no epilepsy warning at the beginning of the piece, but I’d suggest there should be, as the creators of the film certainly subscribe to the idea that there is nothing quite as terrifying as viciously flashing backgrounds. Gone are the days when TV and films were allowed to literally send viewers into fits. Far be it from me to trivialise epilepsy but seizures may be the only way of disguising Roots Search’s many faults.

The film is capped off wonderfully with a dated awful synth-based thoughtless soundtrack, which is coming from someone who is an avid supporter of synth-based offerings. There are better ways of creating mood than simply thrusting both hands onto the keyboard when the monster appears suddenly on screen.

Towards the end of the film, a character is aggressively blinded, and if I were the sort of person who would make light of blindness, I would suggest that it would be preferable to having seen the film. But I won’t do that, obviously.

When the film started I thought that it would be an underground favourite with people who might watch it ironically and find brilliance in its awfulness, like finding a rich seam of gold whilst excavating the cavity of Nick Griffin’s melty eye, but alas, it is just a melty eye. I mean, a bad film. Naughty film! Rub its nose in it!

Galerians: Rion : Film Review

Title: Galerians: Rion

Director: Masahiro Maesawa

Year: 2002

Written by: Chinfa Kang

My interest in Galerions: Rion stems from having owned the game Galerians as a child. I use the term ‘owned’ in its original form, to mean that it was in my possession, not to imply that my gaming skills were astounding. In fact I was awful at it, which was incredibly frustrating as I was very attracted to the premise. Imagine my joy, then, to discover a non-gaming adaptation of the game.

The story follows Rion Steiner, a pristinely gelled teen sporting a waycool short-sleeves over long sleeves number, capped off with red shorts and converse boots in an example of 90s Japanese punk-chic. Perhaps not the most usual design for a lead character in what aims to be a psychic-based survival-horror piece. Rion awakes in a futuristic nightmarish research lab, memory-less and confused, and therefore proceeds to bulldozer his way out of the totalitarianesque laboratory through instinctive use of his psychic powers.

This is rather an abrupt beginning to a film, and is the first example of a trend in the case of Galerians: Rion where I make the concession that: “It probably works better in the game”. A main character under your control in a game is essentially you, the gamer. Bearing this in mind it is a powerful and inclusive device to have an amnesiac main character, as then the story is set up so that as the main character learns things fluidly as the game continues, so does the player. A film is a less immersive format, and having a clueless main character can prove troublesome, especially in a story as chaotic as Galerians: Rion.

Drug-use is a large theme of the story, with injecting various fluorescent liquids endowing Rion with various psychic powers, and eventually, as in real life, leading to both physical and mental breakdowns. The ‘baddies’ of this piece are very much in the syringe-happy camp, and go to great lengths to look the part.

We are treated to Dr Rem; a lanky, eye-patch wearing android, Birdman; a madly cackling Lawrence Llywelyn Bowen-alike in dungarees, Rainheart; a fat kid in a heavy bomber vest and a hairnet, and Rita; a very out of place scarlet-haired bombshell. The oddness of these characters adds to the frenetic feel of the story, where the world feels skewed because of Rion’s wanton drug abuse.

The main problem with this film is that it is badly paced. The story is solidly good, but is ill at ease when squeezed into a feature length time frame, it is clearly meant to be spread out over a longer period, as characters will switch violently from being fierce enemies to having an understanding of one another, which I feel may sit better in the slower, more methodical game format. The film feels like a series of disjointed PS1 cut-scenes. Names of locations flash up on screen as they would as you reach new areas in-game. Enemies are introduced and dispatched in a very short time frame, which left me feeling as though there was no point introducing the character at all. Similarly, there is an over-reliance on Rion’s flame abilities, which leaves the character looking like a tedious one-trick pony, especially when he has access to both lightning and telekinetic abilities.

The story also relies heavily on vague disjointed flashback sequences, which are purposefully disorientating due to the dodgy state of Rion’s perception, but without the gameplay aspect with which to anchor these frantic flashbacks, it is possible to be left confused, rather than frightened, as is the aim.

The settings of the various areas are the messy bastard son of old-school Resident Evil and Portal. This is likely aimed at providing a stark contrast, between the grotty, rusty dilapidated haunted mansion areas and the sterile white blankness of the laboratory style arenas. Perhaps this duality aims to convey the fragile state of Rion’s mind, however it merely made the areas feel more disjointed and clearly like different ‘levels’, another probable leftover from a messy game-to-film adaptation. One particular area design also borrowed heavily from the Mt. Nibel Reactor scene in Final Fantasy 7, which may not bother the vast majority of people, but is sure to niggle Final Fantasy fanboys (like me). Another game leftover are the cut-and-paste sprite style of the enemies, who are either beefed up super-soldiers or comical cartoon ne’er-do-wells in heavy overcoats and trilbies.

The writers clearly had trouble making the fighting translate fully, as battles that would have been difficult, drawn-out affairs in the game are effectively castrated. The importance of ‘survival’ in the game ensures that despite the player’s ability to will spontaneous combustion onto enemies, it is necessary to use the ability sparingly, or run out of power. This methodical, tactical element is absent from the film, which ruins the ‘horror’ aspect of fighting, as Rion just wanders around trailing behind him a mobile bonfire of flammable grunts.

There are a few instances of intelligence-insulting lines in the film, such as the aggravating: “the future of the world lies in your hands”, which does indeed set the scene, but in the most pedestrian way possibly.

The film aims to fit into the Silent Hill school of horror, favouring creeping, suggestive scares rather than the cheap, jumpy variety. I’d argue that it is indeed a student of this school, but where Silent Hill is an honours student, Galerians: Rion is a troubled child suffering from ADHD. The story has the cake of freaky horror well within its grasp, and then proceeds to shovel it into its own face, with sequences that could fit wholesale into any shounen-adventure story. The backbone of Silent Hill’s horror is an everyman main character, Galerians skews this all over the bed by having an obscenely powerful main character who, despite looking incredibly young and frail, wanders around frantically with eyes shining with murder. An over-abundance of screamy powering-up sequenced led me to wonder whether Vegeta and Goku were standing off-camera letting loose. The only horrifying thing about Dragonball Z is the English dub (that is a slam-down my 13 year old self would be proud of).

Despite that, however, the film does show a certain flair when indulging its horror parts, with particularly unsettling imagery including a dead body in a fridge with a pocketwatch forced in its mouth. The film also gathers from the plentiful font of horror that is children. There is hardly anything more viscerally worrying than including children in a horror situation, and a wandering child in a plain white hospital-style gown with a full head of bandages is shudder-inducing. The let-down of these creepy scenes however is there is very little reason for the particulars of them, there is seemingly no purposeful symbolism, the presence of a pocket-watch in the mouth of a corpse is inexplicable beyond a vague sense of “Ooh! Isn’t this freaky?”

The true triumph of the film, in terms of evocative imagery; are the eyes, which are animated magnificently. In every scene, the emotions of the characters and captured and conveyed astoundingly, the tortured, manic madness of addiction, the smug and hateful stare of enemies and the unreserved malevolence of the pitiless monster. Never has the blank dead-eyed stare of a corpse been so affecting.

I began to fear that the story would pan out to be disappointingly shallow, but further layers unravelled grippingly as it progressed. Characters that had seemed two dimensional and very basically ‘bad’, began to be portrayed sympathetically, with their own personal troubles highlighted; addressing self-loathing, schizophrenia or just plain madness. Though the story, arguably, dealt with these issues slightly too simplistically, it was at least an interesting and thoughtful message being offered, where drugs were exposed as the actual cause of the suffering, with the characters themselves portrayed as victims. I feel that this is a heavy handed offering, perhaps, but also a worthy message, especially with attitudes toward drug users today still erring toward the criminal, seeing addicts as criminals to be punished rather than sufferers to be helped.

Certain characters’ death scenes were given a full white backdrop as they performed their earnest, heartfelt soliloquies, outlining their troubles and angst, in a format most recently plundered wholesale by Assassin’s Creed, and to a less wholesome effect by Metal Gear 4. Those of you with the eyes of a hawk will have noticed that the vast majority of comparisons I have drawn for this film are games, and that is because the adaptation isn’t quite complete enough. I would certainly recommend the story highly, but I think I probably would have enjoyed it more, and been more frightened, had I gone back to the actual game.

Despite not being blown away by the film, it does offer a hauntingly bleak ending which a certain type of person (me) would find gratifying and, considering asinine ‘Happy Ever After’ positivity is the well trodden path, grotesquely refreshing.