Mark Reviews Movies: WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 9, 2020

Four recent orphans, strangers until this moment, meet outside a crematorium as the funerals for their parents are happening. They should be crying. Each of them knows it, but none of them does. Life already was bad enough for these kids with their parents, so can it really get any worse?

That seems to be thinking of the main characters of We Are Little Zombies. It's a film that might seem equal parts cynical and depressing, but it possesses such an energetic spirit and a unique way of looking at the lives of these disaffected kids that it never feels despondent. This is the debut feature of writer/director Makoto Nagahisa, a filmmaker who clearly knows as much about how modern-day kids—like every child of each previous generation—escape reality as he does about cementing the world of a film in a distinct style. The film serves as the announcement of a truly promising talent.

Immediately, with an introduction from the story's central character, Nagahisa firmly establishes the film's wicked but still sympathetic tone, as well as its characters' fixation on various means of escape. For Hikari (Keita Ninomiya), the method is video games. He owns a lot of them on various gaming consoles and even has a prized, retro handheld game. They were, he admits, the only way that his parents seemed to show him any form of affection.

Hikari got whatever he wanted when it came to video games, and it definitely helped to divert him from his home life. His father was hardly around, on account of work and likely a slew of extramarital affairs, and never displayed any warmth toward the boy when he was. Hikari's mother had had enough, it seems, if a memory he wasn't supposed to have is any sign. Thinking her son was asleep, she asked Hikari whether he would prefer to live with her or his father, should they get divorced.

The parents died in an accident, on a tour bus that overturned, before Hikari needed to answer such a question for real. All of that is why he doesn't feel like crying during the memorial, the funeral, or as their bodies are being turned to ash, "like Parmesan atop a plate of spaghetti."

The other kids, all standing around the courtyard outside the crematorium, have had similar lives. They are Ishi (Satoshi Mizuno), Takemura (Mondo Okumura), and Ikuko (Sena Nakajima). Their parents died, respectively, by fire, suicide, and murder. None of them can or even feels like crying over the loss, and quick flashbacks involving the parents of each of the youngsters explain why.

The reasons, again respectively, are a lack of caring, physical abuse (which Takemura imagines as a boss fight in video game), and the statement that it would have been better if their daughter had never been born. Ishi, who loves food, can longer taste anything, because he should have been having dinner when his parents' restaurant caught fire. Ikuko might believe her parents were correct, if only in terms of their fate. They were murdered by her obsessive piano teacher, who took his student's wish that her parents weren't around far too seriously.

Explaining all of this certainly makes the film sound like a dreadfully morose experience. It's morose, to be sure, and morbid to boot, but there's nothing dreadful about it. Nagahisa, reflecting the apparent apathy of his main characters, keeps those feelings at bay, by way of an adventure story, transforming mundane activities into the vital quests of a video game and filled with flights of fancy turned real, and so many formal flourishes that we're as distracted from the underlying melancholy as these kids.

Accompanied by a digital score (composed by the filmmaker) reminiscent of video games of a bygone era, the kids fetch assorted totems of their previous lives (Pixelated text announces a successful mission) and try to find a place to call home, all while Hikari evades a relative who is obligated to take care of him. With a little money and a big desire to get away from the next step of their lives as orphans, the quartet keeps moving, determined to continue their adventures as a band of "little zombies," neither alive nor dead, unfeeling, and sick—of all the pain and disappointments of a world ruined by pain-causing and disappointing adults.

Perhaps the most impressive thing here is how Nagahisa continues to surprise us, despite the film's superficially one-note tone (In reality, it's not that simple, because beneath the kids' skepticism and twisted humor are an obvious longing for something more and genuine regret for how things have unfolded) and the established mechanics of its plot. The kids, eventually homeless and inspired by some people living and making music in a junkyard, start a band, turning a song about their emotion-free existence into a viral hit with other children. While we think we have a grasp of Nagahisa's design at that point, adults continue to disappoint, and our expectations are again shattered. The final act is a final level of surreal despair with a taunting "continue" screen.

As surprising as the story's continuous shifts may be, the real surprise is how well Nagahisa depicts the weariness of his young characters. The filmmaking itself is an occasionally thrilling meld of mixed media, inside jokes, visual gags, and inspired effects, but there's a broken heart at the core of We Are Little Zombies. For all of the film's fanciful flourishes, that part feels real.

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