JP Nunez
I have to be honest, I initially wasn’t planning on watching Ghost Killer. In fact, up until just a couple of days ago, the film wasn’t even on my radar. There are so many great movies at Fantastic Fest that some inevitably have to fall by the wayside, and this was slated to be one of those unfortunate casualties for me. But that all changed when I unexpectedly got the chance to review the film. The title and premise both sounded pretty interesting, so I decided to give this movie a shot. And you know what? I’m happy I did.
Ghost Killer was directed by Kensuke Sonomura, and it stars Masanori Mimoto, Mario Kuroba, and Akari Takaishi. In the film, Fumika is a normal college girl whose world gets turned upside down when she picks up a random bullet cartridge she finds lying on the ground. It turns out that this cartridge is from the bullet that killed a master assassin named Kudo, and now, the guy’s spirit has become attached to her.
Kudo has to stay within a certain distance of Fumika, and when they clasp hands, he can even possess the girl. At first, Fumika wants nothing to do with the dead man, but when she learns that she can get rid of him by helping him wreak vengeance on the people who ended his life, she slowly changes her mind.
Ghost Killer begins with a fight between Kudo (before his death) and three masked assailants with knives, and this scene immediately won me over. It’s excellently choreographed and executed, but what really caught my attention was the way it’s shot. See, a lot of American action movies chop up their fight scenes with about a million cuts per second, so you get little more than an indistinct blur.
But this flick is from Japan, and as you might know, they do things a bit differently there. While there are some cuts in this opening fight, they’re relatively few and far between. The scene is composed of long shots that allow you to follow the action with ease, so you can enjoy the fantastic martial artistry on display. It’s the perfect way to start a film like this, and it gave me confidence that the rest of Ghost Killer would be just as good.
And it is, but not for the reasons I was expecting. Yes, the action is phenomenal the whole way through, but until the last 15-20 minutes or so, it takes a surprising back seat. Instead, the majority of this movie focuses primarily on its characters and the hilariously awesome chemistry they have together, and thankfully, Ghost Killer totally knocks it out of the park on that front too.
Let’s start with the lead performance. Fumika is brought to life wonderfully by Akari Takaishi, and this young woman is essentially asked to play two roles. Most of the time, she’s a typical college girl, but when Kudo possesses her character, she also has to act like a veteran assassin. It’s a tough job, but she pulls it off without breaking a sweat. There are even a number of scenes where she has to switch back and forth between Fumika and Kudo in the same shot, and the transition is seamless every single time.
Along similar lines, the relationship between this college girl and her new assassin friend is also super fun. As you can probably guess, these characters couldn’t be more different, and that personality mismatch makes for some genuinely hilarious moments. It’s a bit reminiscent of the chemistry between Venom and Eddie Brock in the Venom films, so if you’re a fan of that franchise, I think you’ll get a huge kick out of this movie.
That being said, there’s more to the characters in Ghost Killer than just light-hearted hilarity. At one point in the story, Fumika meets Kudo’s old assassin friend Kagehara, and these two thugs end up getting surprisingly touching arcs. They both realize that helping people is better than killing them, and those transformations will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Last but not least, we have to talk about the action in Ghost Killer. Like I said before, there’s not much of it in the first two acts, but the little bit we do get is super fun. Then, when we finally reach the last 15-20 minutes, the movie stops holding back, and it’s a thing of violent beauty.
In particular, there’s a fight between Kudo and an equally skilled assassin that just about made my jaw drop. These two combatants are fast, they’re accurate, and the choreography flows so well that it sometimes feels more like a dance than a fight (in a good way!). It’s one of the best martial arts scenes I’ve seen in a long time, and it cements this film as a legit must-see for action aficionados.
So if you’re a fan of the genre, I highly recommend that you give Ghost Killer a watch as soon as it becomes available to a wider audience. With amazing action, hilarious comedy, and likable characters, it’s hands down one of the best movies I’ve seen so far at this year’s Fantastic Fest, and if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I think you’ll love it just as much as I did.
Ghost Killer played at Fantastic Fest on September 19, and it’s set to screen again at the festival on September 25.
