Tokyo Zombie
2005; directed by Sakichi Sato

Two jujitsu-obsessed morons try and take on a city full of the undead in Tokyo Zombie, which is a fun horror/comedy hybrid -- at least for the first half of the running time. When the production tries to take a more serious turn in the latter part, it sadly loses the viewer a bit in the process, and ends up making this ultimately just another zombie movie.

Based on a manga by Yusaku Hanakuma, Tokyo Zombie is the story of Fujio (Tadanobu Asano) and Mitsuo (Sho Aikawa), two slackers who run into trouble after accidentally killing their boss. They decide to dump the body at "Black Mt. Fuji", a giant waste dump -- which just coincidentally has a bunch of toxic waste buried in in that is beginning to bring the corpses ditched in there back to life. On the run, the pair decides to head to Russia, so that they can continue their jujitsu training.

The first half of Tokyo Zombie is fun in a dopey way. Fujio and Mitsuo are the kind of cats that think that supplies for surviving a zombie outbreak are smokes and junk food, not guns and ammo. There really isn't much in the way of any "real" horror -- cheap zombie makeup and bad gore effects aren't exactly a formula for creating terror -- but since the movie isn't taking itself serously, it's easy to think of it simply as a comedy with zombie trappings on the side.

But after about the halfway point, the plot takes a more serious turn, with the story focusing on Fujio becoming a cage fighter, making a paltry living as a virtual slave for what's left of Tokyo's well-to-do population. It's actually a pretty interesting take on the usual zombie movie (though, honestly, it owes more than a little debt to Romero's Land of the Dead) and could have provided some solid entertainment. But the problem is that the film-makers still try to keep the goofy tone of the first half going, and it just doesn't mesh with the more somber happenings.

Overall, Tokyo Zombie isn't a bad movie at all, especially when you look at the crowded realm of zombie movies. If you want to see a really bad example of the genre, just look to utter dreck like Uwe Boll's trashy video game adaptation of The House of the Dead. This is more of a case of good intentions gone south. The film-makers obviously have some intriguing ideas to work with here, but they ultimately failed to pull everything together in a fashion that would make Tokyo Zombie a great movie instead of simply a good one.

RATING: 6