Toronto After Dark Diary Day 3: Tokyo Zombie, Funky Forest

My first exposure to Tokyo Zombie was a photo on Twitch showing Tadanobu Asano in an afro wig. My first thought was that this is what happens when you make too many movies. No matter how good they are you wind up in an afro wig doing your best Lenny from Of Mice and Men impression. And that turned out to be not far from the truth.

Mitsuo and Fujio are workers at a Fire Extinguisher Factory located in the shadow of the dreaded toxic waste dump of Black Fuji Mountain. When they accidentally kill their boss during an argument about wrestling on their lunch hour the goofus twofus decide to dump his body in the toxic ground and head North. Little do they realize their boss, fueled by the negative energies of the area, will rise to start the Zombie Apocalypse. That and bad directions (they wind up going South instead of North) leave Mitsuo in the dust and Fujio on the road to becoming the next Zombie Fighting Champion of condo city.

Pitting a George and Lenny team against the Zombie Apocalypse sounds like a weak follow up to Shawn of the Dead but director Sakichi Sato actually brings an original vision to the table. Very odd choices in music for the film work sometimes and not at others, undead makeup is strictly low budget and the comedy is low brow, but Tokyo Zombie is never boring. I was taken aback some by a few gross out moments- especially those involving a lecherous teacher, but on the whole the film showcases a warm and mostly human relationship between the pair while adhering to what one expects of a zombie com with touches of rom, wrestling, animation, and kitchen sink melodrama.

But Tokyo Zombie is sedate compared to Funky Forest: The First Contact. In fact I mentioned to Festival Director Adam Lopez that a good measure of a persons mental health can be obtained simply by asking the following, “Do you prefer to watch Funky Forest in large groups or alone?” I shudder to think what would have happened had the establishment done the old ultraviolence on my eyelids and forced me to watch this by myself but viewed with a group this astonishingly funny, often heartwarming, occasionally disturbing collection of surreal sketches, dreamscapes, animations and musical numbers exploded into a Midnight Movie experience. People shouted in laughter, sighed with empathy, cheered at just the right moments and yelled words in unison as they appeared on the screen.

Describe Funky Forest? I can’t even describe how the darn thing works much less list the contents. It’s like the Heisenberg Compensator in Star Trek. It’s magic and I’m not sure it can be quantified but it works to transport me through a huge range of human emotion. Fans of the Public Broadcasting System’s Boo Bah or Teletubbies simply shouldn’t miss it.

The film does contain a couple of gross out moments but nothing I would call titillating. In fact one segment involving some disturbingly humanlike rubbery creatures ends on a note (literally) that I would have never guessed. I almost passed out I laughed so hard. And I laughed not just because it was funny, but because it was innocent, it was childlike, it was wondrous.

The film contains almost the complete cast of Taste of Tea, the ever present Asano and host of other highly recognizable Asian film staples and they all look like they are having the time of their lives. I know I did.