X-Cross (Japan. 2007)

Director: Kenta Fukasaku

The only reason I saw X-cross was because I had time to kill. The trailer made it out to be nothing more than a pedestrian entry in the Japanese Horror Genre (Slow Paced, Moody and populated by paper thin female characters ready to scream at the drop of a hat) and as the first fifteen minutes spooled out before me I couldn’t help but feel my eyes glaze over. The production was slick, the director seemed to have a firm grasp on the material at hand and the actresses were passable if unexciting. The problem was that the subject matter was uninteresting. The girl gets chased by crazy cultist villagers. There’s lots of screaming and falling. There’s a woman with a giant pair of scissors dressed as a Victorian doll that won’t die until she gets BLOODY revenge.

Yawn

…Wait…What was that last thing?

Shiyori and Aiko head off to a steam bath retreat in the secluded mountains to blow off some *giggles* steam. Shiyori wants to forget the fact that she caught her boyfriend cheating on her. Aiko wants to continue juggling her five ‘boyfriends’ she keeps on the side. They could probably get it done too, if it wasn’t for the unnerving 110 year old landlady, creepy scarecrows and the legend about the villagers cutting off the legs of women to appease their mountain gods. Whoops. That could be a problem. Before you know it, the girls are running for their life as a mob armed with sharp (Arguably dangerous) things give chase. Did I mention the crazy one eyed woman dressed as a Victorian doll that’s armed with a pair of giant deadly scissors? She’s here too.

Hats off to Director Kenta Fukasaku for completely surprising me. Just as I was about to drift off into ”JUSTIN-IS-BORED-LAND” the film pulls a clever little trick. The title heading CHAPTER 2 appears and we re-wind back to the beginning to follow a different characters path through the same time-frame. Instead of doing a re-hash of what has gone before, the film goes in the completely opposite direction and introduces a completely different plot-line. It becomes an anything goes audience pleasing live action violence filled cartoon! We get chainsaw fights, face melting and giant outhouse explosions! Where do I sign? X-Cross goes from a straight faced shocked to stabbing all the “Oh So Serious” Asian Horror films that have been flooding the market. It pushes the OVERTHETOP button till the whole machine falls over and explodes into a million flashy pieces. That’s not a put-down. It’s actually a compliment. The whole crazy thrill ride is literally a joy to watch with a screaming audience. Director Kenta Fukasaku must have been deceiving us during his last two films (Battle Royale 2 and Yo-Yo Girl Cop) because he was saving the good-stuff for here!

As we left the theater my friend turned to me and said “I wasn’t sure if they were joking or being serious sometimes” and it’s that genre twisting that makes X-Cross really work. Just when you think it’s heading in one direction things flip around completely. It’s not only fun but rewarding. I’m excited to see if Kenta brings the plusses he learned on this film, ditches everything he did wrong before and gives us something that we can truly call classic. Only time will tell. Until then, I’ll keep an eye peeled for a pair of giant novelty scissors of my own.