Former adult movie director Takahisa Zeze creates a highly rewarding hybrid vampire/mafia/action drama with Moon Child, starring Gackt Camui, famed multi-instrumental musician (who cowrote the script alongside the director and Isuchi Kisyu) and Hideto Takarai, lead singer of the multi-platinum selling band, L’Arc~en~Ciel. What results is a masterfully-crafted, probing cinematic meditation spanning thirty-one years as Zeze examines issues of class, crime, time, and friendship, all of which culminate into a heart-retching epic finale, the level of which is rarely seen in today’s films.
In the year 2014, after economic fallout and various class migrations occur throughout the region, young orphaned brothers, Sho (Gackt Camui) and Shinji (Susumu Terajima), and their friend Shinji (Susumu Terajima) resort to petty pick pocketing in order to survive in Mallepa. It is during one of their raids that Sho finds and saves Kei (Hideto Takarai), a vampire who, in return, rescues the gang from the vengeance of an enraged businessman whom the hoods attempted to rob. Ten years later, the boys now in their teen years, the group has shifted to armed robbery as a means of survival. It is during this time they befriend Son (Lee-Hom Wang) as he avenges the gang that raped his sister, Yi-Che (Zeny Kwok), who is now a mute as a result of the sexual trauma. Shortly thereafter, Sho falls in love with Yi-Che. However, her interests are focused upon Kei. It is during this time that Kei is apprehended by the police and imprisoned. Nine years later, Son joins the criminal underground and Sho marries Yi-Che, who gives birth to a girl whom the couple name Hana (Anne Suzuki). Shinji is killed by Son’s gang and when Son, Sho, and Yi-Che pay their respects, Sho declares retribution for his friend’s death, citing Son as his primary target. Shortly thereafter, Yi-Che is diagnosed with a brain tumor and Sho, distraught, turns to Kei, who is about to put to death for his crimes. Upon the news of the family need for him, Kei escapes but only to be confronted with an impromptu request from Sho and to find himself amid a heated rivalry between his friends.
What is most impressive about Zeze’s work is, though Kei is introduced early in the film as a vampire, the director does not use the easy character crutch to maintain audience attention. Instead, he uses the figure’s metaphysical stature as a signpost for his revolving cast as we watch the effects of the various characters’ economic and geographic exile permeate and influence their lives for more than two decades.
Of the primary cast, of which each performer presents veteran-level outings, Camui and Takarai, both in their first feature-length screen roles, succeed superbly, but Takarai in particular as he permits the viewer to sympathize with his existential desire to be relieved of his eternal stature due to the fact that he cannot condone killing another in order to merely prolong his mundane existence (thus Zeze creates a subtle, yet near deafening, theme of misanthropy as we watch Kei freely kill for other motives).
The only time in which Kei’s vampirism comes to the forefront of the film is during one of Moon Child’s most overwhelming scenes: Sho begs his friend to feed upon his wife because Yi-Che’s tumor is found to be malignant (much in the same manner as seen in Robert Siodmak’s Son of Dracula). However, Kei refuses, unwilling to condemn another to his damnable plight. It is during this scene that the power of their friendship ingeniously congeals, bringing it to an epic level of intensity which, surprisingly, serves as the groundwork for a paradoxical, but nonetheless highly rewarding and satisfactory, conclusion.
Some critics have commented upon Sho and Kei’s friendship being borderline homoerotic yet, if one takes into account the fashion of androgyny in Japan during the film’s production and the culture’s sociological emphasis, a Western viewer’s note as such tends to suffer as a consequence. This isn’t to state that such a thesis isn’t arguable or necessarily invalid but, in relation to the work’s overall preoccupation with time and human alliances, such could not be created without the inclusion of scenes which could easy be interpreted and read in said manner.
The only overriding complaint I had with the film is Takahide Shibanushi’s cinematography which, at times, houses a very dated feel that counteracts Zeze’s hyperreal action scenes. Of course, if this is the only thing in which a film has as a prevailing concern lodged against it, things could be a lot worse considering . . .
Moon Child is a masterfully well-made epic exploring many pertinent themes in an arresting, visually appealing manner which few filmmakers today can claim to hold a light. Takahisa Zeze expertly directs Gackt Camui and Hideto Takarai into daunting, award-quality performances while steadily helming the production to its psychologically devastating resolution. As such, Moon Child is a treat and a treasure, not only of Eastern, but of world cinema.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
