I've seen a lot of Takashi Miike films and they're all pretty weird, but none so weird as this one. Although it's got the same title as a 1968 'yokai monsters' film, it tells a very different story of a CGI-augmented battle between the yokai and an evil demon overlord intent on both transforming the good monsters into evil mechanical creatures and destroying mankind to boot. Whew! It's certainly an oddball production, overlong too and taking a while to get going. There are missteps along the way, like OTT cruelty to small fluffy creatures, but elsewhere the bizarre comedy works and the FX are pretty decent for what they are. It's also hard to dislike a film with such a fine display of creativity, humour, and sheer weird chaos behind it.
Review of The Great Yokai War
