Review: Ryuhei Kitamura's Alive.

Alive is a sci-fi horror thriller directed by Ryuhei Kitamura and stars Hideo Sakaki, Ryo & Koyuki, and Jun Kunimura with Tetta Sugimoto, Erika Oda, a guy named Bengal, Shun Sugata, and Tak Sakaguchi in supporting roles. Alive is based off Alive by Tsutomu Takahashi.

The film revolves around two prisoners on death row (Sakaki and Sugimoto), isolated in a mysterious prison cell with an alien that feeds on their hosts' humanity and turning them increasingly violent.

Alive, hands down, might be one of the coolest films ever made. Like even with the prior knowledge of Ryuhei Kitamura (who directed Final Wars, one of the coolest Godzilla films ever along with MGS Twin Snakes), I was just fully blown away. From the start alone it was a "Oh it's gonna be one of THOSE films" kinda intros.

Kitamura and his crew went just all out on this films style, it's so....industrial, like the music genre. This is what Aphex Twin's "At The Heart of it All" would look like as a movie. From the set, to the clothing, to the music, to the everything feels so unique. It's no wonder he got to do Twin Snakes as this film felt very Kojima to me. The whole film just screamed "Kojima" to me.

Cinematography is through the roof. I love how little Alive relies on cuts and keeps a large majority of it as just one moving shot, and in combination with the heavy zoom ins looked, and I know there's a better way to describe it, "video game cutscene" to me. The flashbacks, where they just spam scenes in varying contrasts across the screen, and the chapter-like progression through the film is what gave me the most "Kojima-ness" to me and I LOVE it. All the little things they do makes the film feel so...well, alive. It has it's own personality.

This film feels truly like a character, it has so many unique quirks and design choices and personality that makes it stand out so much more than other films I've seen. It was also shockingly coherent, at times it felt a little hard to understand but it was just so...clear to me. I understood it on a level an art fan understands an abstract painting, if that makes sense.

There is just one thing I'm conflicted on, the ambiguity of the film. While I do praise it's heavily stylized cyberpunk adjacent world, I feel like I know a little too little information on the world Alive is set in. I wish there was just a little more explanation on the alien, if it even is one, sure there is an explanation about it being linked to flies but I feel like it was another sci-fi tv explanation just like with the Area 51 and eating an animal explanations given prior in the film. Regardless, even if I find it the only film's flaw, it's minor nitpicking at the most.

Something I haven't seen brought up in the reviews I've read so far, and why I called this film a thriller despite being more sci-fi horror, is how good the tension is in this movie. The movie has this like, tense ambiance near constantly and they rarely go a minute without it playing and it adds an aura of mystery to it. It's kinda like a heartbeat at times, and is why I likened it to Aphex, it just screamed his genre of ambient to me.

While I don't like Hideo Sakaki cause of, reasons, I did enjoy his performance in Alive as his character definitely felt natural as a sorta emotionally detached and traumatized character with these just WILD flashbacks full of bones and blood and...yeah, I appreciate how they never directly show the murders his character committed. Only snippets of the aftermath.

If I'm being up front, I didn't come here for the action, I mean I did since this is Kitamura we're talking about here, but it became more of an afterthought the longer the film went on. The action is by all means great though, it's very flashy and full of dudes going flying and getting launched telekinetically, there is martial arts in it but not a whole not. It's like watching superpowered ninjas fight people, you don't really expect them to use their fighting skills against a regular guy.

And one last thing, the makeup guys did an incredible job on Tak Sakaguchi. He looks unrecognizable but it's a shame all this talent was used on Sakaguchi, a truly awful person, and when he fought Sakaki all I could really think was "two awful people fighting eachother", it was an entertaining fight sure but felt bogged down by my outsider knowledge of what the two did. (They both have some intense allegations, if you catch my drift. I was really bummed learning Sakaguchi is awful, he was a favorite actor of mine for a really long time.)

While Alive didn't quite make the cut for my top 4, it's one of my favorite movies ever, like top 5. I definitely rank it up there with so many crazy films like Hakaider and Electric Dragon 80000V, as it is beyond the regular outlines of a film and relies heavily on its style than a cohesive story.

I would highly recommend it for people who enjoyed Final Wars, MGS2, and fans of the niche sci-fi prison genre of movie.

That's all for now, Love and Peace!