As splattering as Tokyo Gore Police, and as ADHD as something like Godzilla: Final Wars, Helldriver is an all you can eat buffet of quantity, with some quality, in a zombie movie. The practical effects when they are there are great. Yoshihiro Nishimura does a decent job grounding this movie in a Land of the Dead type of reality where a world is built enough for you to invest in the story. That being said, the first 10 minutes or so features zombies piling themselves together to create one giant zombie, a truck comes and hits them. Then the main character of the movie shows with a chainsaw sword attached to her heart. At a certain point in the movie severed heads of the zombies are launched like artillery. If that is the type of Looney Tunes slapstick humor you want with gore this movie is for you.
Synopsis: A mysterious mist blankets the northern half of Japan, transforming those who inhale it into ravenous, flesh-eating zombies. Hope arrives in the form of Kika, a beautiful high-school girl armed with a chainsaw sword powered by an artificial heart.
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Some of the scenes early on set the precedent for things to come. A man uses a chain of some kind to cut the antlers off the zombies' heads. They eventually get ahold of those antlers and drag him down. What follows, and what happens throughout the movie is many different shots of blood and gore specifically spraying blood onto faces and objects, a little similar to some shots in the Hatchet movies. Some shots in Tokyo Gore Police like spraying blood that looks like water droplets in slow motion is also on display throughout. Some of the zombie carnage is followed by a shot of the moon, a truck coming out of nowhere to hit the zombies and Kika (Yumiko Hara) showing up and cutting off the lead zombie's head. This lead zombie by the way looks like something from Braindead or Return of the Living Dead with a degloved face and the eyes all white and sticking out with the spine out. What you find out about the zombies in this movie, in a unique twist, is that they can only be killed if the antlers are removed from their head. So instead of the actual brain stem being the thing that keeps them alive it is the antler. Like some other zombie movies there is fun to be had when a zombie can lose limbs or other parts of its anatomy and still keep going. This puts a new twist on that when you have the Looney Tunes type of moments where zombies severed arms can take control of chainsaws and Kika will have a sword fight with the chainsaws controlled by live hands.
That opening sequence is just an intro to some of the crazy and original ideas you see in this movie. The movie follows Kika but her opposition is actually her mother, Rikka (Eihi Shiina). Her abusive mother is a cannibalistic serial killer with her uncle Yasushi who then burn her father to death in front of her. Hellraiser anyone?! Rikka is about to rip Kika's heart out when they are both struck by a meteor that envelops both of them in a cocoon, Kika is taken by some government agents who turn her into a character with an artificial heart and chainsaw sword. Following this is some exposition where it is explained that the ashes from the meteor cause the people to become zombies. The southern part of Japan where infection took place is quarantined from the rest. The government has debates over whether or not the zombies should be considered human or not. That leads to some fun scenes later but is also an interesting way to ground this movie in reality. This feels like what could happen in the real world when a virus is isolated and whether or not we treat different things as humans is a debate going back forever. It not only feels like a zombie movie, but also the post-apocalyptic movies of the 1980s.
Yumiko Hara as Kika
Around a year after the meteor hits Kika is let out near one of the walls dividing the parts of Japan. She teams up with Taku (Yurei Yanagi) and his mute sidekick No-Name. They go out collecting antlers to bring to black market dealers as the substance from the antlers is a kind of drug. See, even more world building. Around the same time, Rikka is freed from her cocoon and becomes Queen of the zombies. The prime minister goes live declaring that the zombies are indeed human...until he is attacked by one and his soldiers can't shoot until he says they aren't human. The new prime minister and agents capture Kika and her friends and task her with killing Queen Rikka.
Eihi Shiina as Rikka
An example of the type of blood spray on display in this movie.
The middle of this movie has two fun action sequences. I'll get to the quality of them in a minute. One takes place at an abandoned warehouse where the team tries to rescue Maya, No-Name's sister. Before they can there is a zombie rape scene with Maya where the zombies bite her nipples off. Trigger warning for that though it is so over the top it is humorous in its own way. While driving zombies' heads are launched at them like artillery. Before they get to the warehouse a former cop, Kaito (Kazuki Namioka) saves them from the severed zombie heads by blowing them up with a shotgun. At the warehouse each group fights distinct zombies. Kika fights one with swords and guns for body parts and Kaito fights the now resurrected Yashushi with his truck. He also fights one that has a bunch of swords through its body. Taku and No-Name fight one that is a mutant composed of severed body parts. They are chased by Yashushi in a truck made of zombie parts. There is some real tension as they approach a cliff and Taku sacrifices himself to save everyone. There is some real green and blue screen during the backgrounds of the chase. That is not the only CGI throughout as I think some of the blood in the medium shots is computer generated and some of the zombie effects like the missing body parts could be CGI as well. I have a good eye for it but maybe not the best eye. Like I said quantity with some quality. I did invest in these characters some and the part when Maya dies in No-Name's arms and he struggles to let emotion out is actually quite moving. So there are many things like the world building and the characters to help ground this.
The finale of this movie is something to behold where rockets are shot at a giant skyscraper of zombies on top of one another made by Rikka. It takes off like a plane to go across the quarantine. The military fights zombies on the ground while Kika tries to climb the "plane" of zombies. It leads to a long fight with her mother to determine the fate of the universe...
Spoiler Section
Kika fights her Uncle and kicks him into one of the missiles that explodes. She fights her mother and tears her heart out. Her severed head goes into space and lands on a planet like the meteor at the beginning of the movie.
I really enjoyed this movie. It has blood and gore, awesome and unique makeup effects, a good story and a developed world for a zombie movie. It is a little long to start and the CGI and editing drag it down a bit but I could never say this wasn't fun or ambitious. Yoshihiro Nishimura is the Tom Savini of Japanese gore effects. I really liked how the zombies had white faces and the contact lenses and the look of Eihi Shiina's eyes was awesome. She basically looks like a heavily made-up version of a Power Rangers villain. I do like some homages to Audition like hearing her say "tickle, tickle tickle," in the exact same way she said, "deeper."
Rating: 7/10
Trivia: the chain-sword weapon is also prominent in the Warhammer video games.
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