The newest Yamaguchi J-horror teases fun potential, but ultimately falls flat...

During the weekend of October 14-16, I was given the rather happy duty of co-hosting the 2nd Annual Telluride Horror Show in Telluride, Colorado. The following review is one of a selection of film features and shorts that I had the opportunity to screen during my tenure as co-host. Keep an eye out for more reviews from the Telluride Horror Show!

Whether you love Japanese horror or loathe it, it's hard to argue that the genre is practically the definition of the term 'acquired taste'. Moreover, recent entries seem to have gravitated largely to two different camps - deeply atmospheric (and sometimes plodding) tales, or over-the-top absurdity. Deadball fits firmly, if somewhat uncomfortably, in the latter.

Tak Sakaguchi stars as Jubeh Yakyu, a baseball prodigy with the arm strength of a few Supermans put together. When told by his elderly father to throw as hard as he can during a game of catch in the film's opening sequence, Jubeh inexplicably flies several thousand feet in the air and hurls the baseball with such velocity that it flattens out as it screams towards the ground, creating a crater several hundred feet wide upon impact and killing Jubeh's father in a understandably-gruesome manner.

As silly as it sounds, I almost wish that I could end the review right here and give Deadball a moderately-decent score based on goofy thrills alone. Sadly, the aforementioned opening scene is the apex of the film's fun and campiness. From there on, the movie devolves into overly-complicated subplots and a strange lack of actual baseball playing.

Sentenced to prison for his father's death, Yakyu finds himself at Pterodactyl Juvenile Reformatory, which is headed by a Japanese neo-Nazi whose staff performs body cavity searches on the new inmates that leave little to the imagination. This scene should bring down the house; instead, it is overly-long, repetitive, and boring. What follows is a monotonous slog through a battle of wills between the Pterodactyl headmistress, who wants Jubeh to play for the prison baseball team, and Jubeh, who has refused to play since his father's death. If I had a dollar for every time that "no, I promised to never play again", or some variation thereof, was mentioned, I could retire a rich man.

When Jubeh inevitably (and predictably) gives in after a healthy dose of blackmail, the anticipated game between Pterodactyl and the homicidal harem girls of Black Dahlia's scarcely resembles baseball. And I guess that's the joke. Pitches flung towards the plate routinely turn into rockets, split into nets of razor wire, and explode like super-powered grenades, just to add to the level of nonsensical splatter. And that would have been hilariously awesome if it was done right. But whether there's a major cultural divide between this movie and myself, or the plot has the attention span of Michael Bay at a Shakespearean drama, it was done way, WAY wrong.

With 'deadballs' flying, and the audience anticipating a flurry of gross-out gags and fountains of gore at the climax, the film actually flinches and begins implying deaths off-screen, instead of having the stomach to show them. To put it mildly, that's an odd maneuver for a film that earlier explicitly showed people shoving their hands up peoples' rectums. When the 'game' abruptly ends with the arrival of Jubeh's believed-to-be-dead younger brother Musashi, who is clad in the trappings of a murderous Nazi robot, I started seriously wondering if this second climax was the result of my popcorn having been spiked with LSD. No, I had to remind myself, it's just a Japanese horror film. The ensuing battle between Jubeh and Clockwork Musashi is painful and a 'surprise' ending that finds Jubeh in North Korea with a terrible Kim Jong-Il look-alike is mindblowingly-dumb and a clearly tacked-on afterthought.

Deadball must be great fun for some people, but I found little enjoyment in either the plot or the level of gore and splatter, which turned to be much lower and less amusing than advertised. The audience that I saw it with didn't seem to enjoy it much either. And this is a festival audience we're talking about - a couple hundred people begging for a chance to laugh or applaud, but ending up spending 95% of their time in near-total silence.

The film is hardly an expensive affair, the estimated budget standing at roughly $600,000 (US). And when it comes to movies like this, I don't expect much. But what I do expect from a horror/comedy, that markets itself as having a jaw-dropping level of silliness and absurdity, is a good time. And Deadball just isn't. To be fair, there were occasional chuckle-inducing moments, such as Jubeh's habit of reaching his hand out of the frame and pulling in a lit cigarette. But unless your last name is Zucker, sight gags do not an enjoyable film make. The supporting cast was pretty decent, with several of the Pterodactyl team members showing sparks of comedic flair. And the special effects are fantastic, considering the budget. But the film begs for much more copious use of both humor and blood. The plot, sadly, just doesn't provide it.

Am I being too hard on Deadball? Maybe. But I'd be lying if I wasn't expecting it to be a festival highlight. In truth, it was far from it. I've read reviews that gave Deadball great scores and positive feedback, pointing to its sight gags, inside jokes, and director Yudai Yamaguchi's purposely bad taste and gleeful ridiculousness. Well, I know 'gleeful ridiculousness'. I like 'gleeful ridiculousness'. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is far from 'gleeful ridiculousness'. It is oddly complicated and it is boring - two of the worst sins that a splatter comedy can commit. The plot screams for cheese, goofiness, and over-the-top gore. What viewers get instead is a steady diet of heavy sighs and heavy eyelids.

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