Dragon Head review

Ever had one of those dreams where you’re trying your hardest to run from something but your legs just don’t want to work properly? That’s kind of the feeling I had the entire time I was watching Dragon Head; and while having completely inept main characters narrowly escaping impending doom at every turn while limping dramatically and whining can really ramp up the tension, it can also be downright frustrating. You get a nice preview of this brand of frustration when the main character stumbles 6 times and completely falls down with an emphatic “UNF!” 16 times in the first 10 minutes of the movie. That’s including the lengthy opening credits. And yes, I really did count. It can be a bit demoralizing when you realize the protagonist you’re going to be tagging along with through such a perilous journey is a completely useless klutz, but what he lacks in the ability to stay vertical for more then 7 seconds at a time he makes up for in a combination of determination and sheer inconceivable luck.

Teru Aoki (Satoshi Tsumabuki) wakes up in a stupor on the floor of a wrecked train car. He has brief flashes of what he was doing beforehand imprinted in his memory but no concept of what happened to put him in that predicament. He remembers being on the train during some sort of school trip, bending down under a seat to pick up a can of juice, and then a brilliant flash of light. It’s then when he realizes that he’s not only surrounded by the wreckage of the destroyed train, but also the mangled corpses of his classmates. Horrified, he stumbles his way out of the car to find the entire train has been boxed into a tunnel by massive piles of collapsed rubble on both ends and there’s seemingly no way out. After some more investigation he finds another kid alive and splattered with blood. It’s Nobuo (Takayuki Yamada), a student from a different class who everyone beats up and picks on. Together they find some food but it soon becomes abundantly clear that Nobuo is not mentally stable when he starts threatening Teru with a knife and yelling at him to get out. Teru obliges and falls out of the car. Just then the cave begins to shake and debris starts falling from above so Teru takes cover under the car where he finds another girl alive, Ako Seto (Sayaka Kanda). Ako decided to hide there after witnessing Nobuo’s insanity earlier in their class’ train car.

Nobuo seems completely content with staying put, thinking that since the world is ending anyway they might as well “embrace the darkness” as he puts it. Teru has other plans, however, and after discovering a pipe hanging down from the ceiling of the cave he wants to climb up and attempt an escape. A long struggle ensues with a now completely deranged Nobuo but eventually Teru and Ako make their way into the pipe and slowly climb their way to the surface. What they find when they finally get out is complete and utter devastation. The land is coated with thick white ash as far as they can see in every direction and the sky is completely opaque. The world they once knew is gone. Left with no other options but to either give up or try to make it back to Tokyo they set off on the long journey home, hoping to find some signs of life along the way. They do find some people alive, but many have been driven to insanity much like Nobuo. The rest of the film becomes a stark contrast between Teru and Ako’s willingness to persevere in the face of complete hopelessness versus everyone else’s inability to cope with the pain of what they’ve been through. It ultimately becomes clear that the physical weakness of the main characters only serves to highlight their inner strength in the face of adversity. It’s sort of a comment on Japanese culture, which generally values stick-to-itiveness over physical strength or skill. This film may seem somewhat depressing or anticlimactic at times to westerners but to the Japanese not giving up is sometimes more of an accomplishment than success.

Once I got over my initial frustration with Teru’s general ineptitude I was able to really enjoy this movie for what it is. The overall message may be lost on some but even so, if you’re a fan of apocalyptic movies it really doesn’t get more apocalyptic than this. Visually Dragon Head is pretty stunning and aside from some fairly obvious background paintings the special effects are adequate enough to get the job done. The fact that we’re never really told what caused the destruction or how far-reaching it actually is let’s the audience focus exclusively on the struggle of the survivors and how they react to a tragedy instead of nature itself being the star, which is the usual tendency with this type of film. The plight of the characters makes you put yourself in their situation and really think about what you would do in their position. Would you just give up and accept the inevitability of death or keep trudging on blindly, hoping to somehow find some spark of hope for the future? Like life there are no easy answers given in this film, but in the end that makes it far more realistic than any of the disaster movies that have come out of Hollywood in recent years.

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Availability: US distributor Tokyo Shock released "Dragon Head' on region 1 DVD with English subtitles on September 27, 2005. For more info, see this post.

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