Moon Child review

I’m not much of a fan of visual kei or J-pop aside from a mild obsession with downloading torrents of Japanese variety shows so the prospect of watching a movie written by and starring Gackt wasn’t very appealing to me. Knowing that Moon Child was somehow vampire-related I went into it completely expecting this film to be a vehicle for Gackt and Hyde to show off their ultra-mopey outward personas while occasionally pausing in those I-want-to-die poses that drive the fangirls crazy. I’ll admit I was mostly wrong in that assumption, but not quite wrong enough to warrant a glowingly positive review.

Aside from a brief introductory scene set at the turn of the 21st century the movie really begins in earnest in the year 2014 in the fictional Chinese city of Mallepa. Many Japanese immigrants have flooded into Mallepa for some reason that’s never fully explained and although Mallepa’s official stance is equality among races there is still major discrimination from citizens toward the Japanese they blame for a recent economic downturn.

A group of scrappy Japanese street urchins survive in this environment through the skillful execution of petty crimes until one day one of the kids, Sho, tries to steal a watch from some depressed looking homeless guy (Hyde) who begins to spontaneously combust in the sunlight. Instead of flipping out Sho drags the man to safety and continues on with some more petty crime with his brother Shinji and their friend Toshi. They end up stealing a suitcase from a gangster who tracks them down and shoots Shinji in the back of the leg. The previously lethargic man Sho dragged out of the sunlight then springs into action and does his vampire thing on the gangster. For some reason Sho doesn’t get scared away. In fact he flashes the vampire a fairly creepy full-toothed grin and a friendship begins.

In what becomes quite an annoying little feature of Moon Child time warps forward again and now the manic depressive vampire (who we discover is named Kei) is teamed up with Sho (Gackt) and Toshio (Taro Yamamoto). They have a little scam going which benefits them all wherein Toshio delivers drugged pizza to gangster hideouts, then Sho and Kei move in to rob them of cash and human blood respectively. You see Kei is a vampire of the woeful reluctant variety. Having eternal life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you have a conscience so Kei relegates himself to dining exclusively on “bad guy” blood to survive.

One day while robbing some more gangsters Kei, Sho, and Toshi run into Son (Wang Lee-Hom) who happens to be out for revenge against the gangsters that raped his sister (Zeny Kwok). After a long drawn-out gun fight the five of them become fast friends, signified by a montage of generic happy friend time filtered to look like 8mm home movies reminiscent of the conclusion of any particularly dramatic episode of The Wonder Years (this is the future, right?). Of course the happiness can’t last for long. Soon dead-eyed Koji Chihara and his brother Seiji start stalking the group and it’s safe to assume they’re not looking for an audience for their manzai routine. At this point the story takes a decidedly friendship-related turn complete with more jarring time shifts and a seemingly endless supply of moping. Yep, that about covers it.

Since Moon Child has novice actors in leading roles I was fully willing to overlook the fact that the gun battles are about as realistic and well-choreographed as some of the cap gun wars waged in my back yard circa 1988. Instead, the major flaws in Moon Child are mostly script related. The continuity, although never glaringly “wrong” is quite often completely illogical. One wonders why Kei, an unkillable vampire hardly ever uses his powers for anything but occasionally hopping from one place to another to look cool while his utterly mortal friends are being shot at from all sides. That’s certainly easy enough to dismiss as one of the principles of stylized violence but there are so many little nonsensical details like that peppered throughout the movie that it really starts to pile up to a degree that can’t be overlooked anymore. I’ve never seen a movie that carefully establishes so many plot points that fizzle out without warning - the most glaring examples being Kei’s vampirism and the racial tension between the Taiwanese and Japanese. Major issues like that are worthy of being the main theme of the movie but are instead abandoned in lieu of the much more cliché and disappointing “Friendships change over time, isn’t that depressing?” theme.

The acting performances could’ve been a lot worse considering the three main characters are all major pop stars but problems arise with the drastic shift from a campy action flick to full-on melodrama, causing the acting performances to go from completely over-the-top in an appropriate way to completely over the top in a lame, hackneyed way. Still; if you’re a fan of Gackt, Hyde, or Wang Lee-Hom to any degree there’s so much of them in this film that you should absolutely watch Moon Child. If you’re not a fan of any of them then you should probably avoid it for the exact same reason.

Watch trailer

Availability: US distributor TLA Releasing included "Moon Child" in its "Danger After Dark" collection, which was released on June 27, 2006. For full specs, see this link.

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