Tag Archives: Ring Shark

Let EVIL Give You a Hand! “The Beast Hand” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Beast Hand” Grabs A Blu-ray Release! Buy it Here!

A derelict criminal Osamu Kogure finds himself back in the company of his jumped parole crime boss Akira Inui, Kogure is back to being a manipulated puppet at the whims of a conceited and aggressive Inui.  When Inui persuades Kogure to give up the whereabouts of an old, reluctant fling Koyuki Igarashi, who went through full body surgery to wipe away her past with Inui, Kogure and Igarashi are trapped by Inui’s bull-headed intimidation, forcing them into a rushed heist that ends with Korgure’s hand being severed.  A syndicate surgeon grafts a deformed, experimental monstrous limb on his wound that turns Kogure into a superhuman beast when provoked.  Now gone rogue out of the surgeon’s reach, Kogure and Igarashi are hunted down across the region by a powerful crime boss’s clan to extract the success of Kogure’s new, powerful extremity but the once timid and submissive delinquent will no longer go down without a fight. 

Taichiro Natsume, the director behind the Big Summer Psychic Team shark series, such as “Ring Shark,” “Love Shark,” and “Last Shark,” moves away from the supernaturally swimming maneater terrorizing the sands and lands surrounding the creature’s resident watering well and popping up out of the bathwater of those clutched in its curse, forgoes another shark infested entry for a monstrous transplant tentacle in his latest outrageous indie horror, “The Beast Hand,” aka “Koletise käsi,” or original titled “Kemonote.”  The Japanese film is one part science-fictional body-horror thriller and one part yakuza splatter strife and is all part penned from the mixed-up monstrosity and melancholy swirling inside Natsume’s mind with cowritten efforts from Yasunori Kasuga.  Lead actor Takahiro Fukuya wears multiple production for producing the production under his studio company Eigabatake that foots the partial budget combined with the crowdfunding remaining purse pieces to bring this splatter dream to reality. 

Takahiro Fukuya invests himself full throttle into the role of Osamu Kogure leading to his real life and role to nearly be parallel to each other as Fukuya quits his day job, spends most of his money, and, likely, leads a temporary pauper lifestyle, much like his character, in order to get his vision off the ground and into production.  Fukuya embodies the weak-minded aspects of a fragile delinquent, submissive to a much more apex predator in the recently prison released, escaped parolee Akira Inui (Yôta Kawase, “Slave Ship,” “Maniac Driver”) in a take-all, give-nothing leader position in what Inui considers is his gang, completed by Misa Wada’s objectified into sexual slavery of Koyuki Igarashi.  The pink eiga actress, of such hits as “Corpse Prison” and “Black Tears,”  has lingering anxiety and timorous defensiveness for her character’s subject of sexual and verbal abuse by Inui only for it to transfigure it into a slap-across-the-face affection for the even more cowardly Kogure in an unforgettable sex scene prior to the monstrous hand augmentation.  The second half of the story rather abruptly butts into Korgure and Igarashi’s departure of the city and into more humble means of making a go of their relationship, especially now Igarashi is months pregnant after their slappy-rollick on top of the sleeping bag sack.  Character exposition of the couple’s circumstances at this point is nonexistent as Natsume uses images and exterior shaping scenes to fabricate their current, still poor, state trying to make it work until the surgeon and the gang leader come to collect their handy work.

“The Beast Hand” embarks into different subcategories of splatter subgenre filmmaking.  Natsume certainly pays homage to the Japanese gore-and-splatter films in his own miniscule way but keeps the blood down to the minimal level allowed for labelling as such, but the filmmaker invests into the hardships of the accounted characters without unleashing too many background details or story dynamic particulars to that doesn’t allow audiences to become too involved leaving characters banally wrapped in their strife from point A-to-Z.  Instead, Natsume concenters around two sides of the story;  the first being the elegancy of Kogure and Igarashi’s unlikely and oddly misshapen relationship with scenes of beach walking, comforting, cheap meals in a humble home, and of course, the slap-happy sex scene of two belittled and downtrodden people tying one off in expressive fit of passion while the second part is more tension-riddled hearty with a yakuza hunt for Kogure’s one-of-a-kind beast hand.  Both sides balance awkwardly along a sporadically dotted line of limited detail and time passed but ultimately collide at a culminating point of a beast hand slaughterhouse when Igarashi’s safety boils up the beast from within Kogure, tracking “The Beast Hand” as a horror with to some extent a rivulet of romantism often clunky and riddled with holes. 

Cleopatra Entertainment distributes in association with Reel Suspects the Blu-ray release of Taichiro Natsume’s “The Beast Hand.”  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD25 decodes an anemic picture presented in widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Visually, “The Beast Hand” has nothing going for it other than a clean experience with no aliasing, minor banding, and other immaterial compression issues.  The lack of color pop and the feather washed grading dampen with a lifeless aesthetic toward a Japanese splatter subgenre that’s literally soaked in a manga style or pop art.  Dialogue renders over cleanly and with clarity in a Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo that syncs timely with the forced, grammatically errorless English subtitles.  Immersive qualities are limited to the two front channels that are vigorous only during the intermittent action full of Lou Ferringo Hulk snarls and growls when Kogure goes full milky-eyed beast mode and good squishy Foley as stomachs and heads are eviscerated and sliced down.  Bonus features are typical run of the mill for Cleopatra Entertainment with a cache of trailers for the company’s recent releases.  There’s also marketing promo clips for “The Beast Hand” but in Japanese without English subtitles.  The standard Blu-ray Amaray encases a decent, and uncredited, original photoshop illustration that is, however, partly inaccurate, and awkwardly arranged with a beast hand resembling nothing like the body horror hand transplant in the movie.  The cover feels like right off the commercial printer, raw homemade art.  Inside is the same art pressed to the disc with no other accompaniments.  The region free, not rated Blu-ray has a runtime of 77 minutes. 

Last Rites: As far as J-horror goes, “The Beast Hand” has average appeal inside a strung along story and not enough absurd Japanese off-the-wall concepts and violence to stand out amongst the crowded subgenre.

“The Beast Hand” Grabs A Blu-ray Release! Buy it Here!

Dump Buckets and Buckets of Water Back into this Dry EVIL Well. “Ring Shark” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!

For the subscribers of her Youtube show, vlogging social media influence Kanamasa and her co-host search for a stone well rumored to be in a haunted forest surrounded by unfriendly villagers who aggressively ward off unwelcomed visitors.  Upon discovering the well, a shark-like creature emerges suddenly and bites Kanamasa, scaring them off.  A few days later, another pair of Youtube investigators of the Psychic Investigations Big Summer learn of Khana’s disappearance after her last video surfaces of what looks to be a shark fin and then a ghastly body surfaces from within her bathtub, attacking her bikini-garbed body.  Seeking the truth and eager to find Khana, the investigators conduct interviews with “shark” experts and attempt to visit the same well only to be shooed off by the villagers until, finally, they’re able to reach the same spot and experience the same sharp-teethed horror lurking within it.  Unknowingly, that same supernatural terror of the well had follow them home. 

Sharksploitation has admittedly gotten out of hand.  The beloved horror subgenre that began with Steven Spielberg and Bruce the mechanical monstrous shark who terrorized the beaches of Amity Island have since drowned in its own watery subcategory of the ocean’s maneater predators with microbudget ineptitude that takes the shark from its natural ecosystem and rehomes it in a miscellany of nonsense locations, such as on land, in the weather, and even circling in toilets.  Well, today is the day we’ve come across a movie been assimilated into that same fatuous collective with “Ring Shark,” aka “Well Shark,” aka “Ido Shark.”  The Japanese, found-footage comedy-horror is the first of a trio of incongruous shark films released between 2023 and 2024 by Taichiro Natsume with “Love Shark” and “Last Shark” to follow, connected by the Big Summer team of Psychic Investigators.  Natsume also wrote and produced the feature.

Unfamiliar with the Psychic Investigator Big Summer series, which there’s uncertainty if Big Summer is a Japanese comedic troupe, equivalent to the Broken Lizard of America, what “Ring Shark, or “Ido Shark” begins is a series of various haunted case probes by the Big Summer team, which in this film in particular include actors using modifications of or using their actual names as characters in the story, such as director Taichiro Natsume being the single male lead in the group under character name Daiichiro Natsume.  Daiichiro Natsume can be a bumbling, yet persistent fool when it comes to the mysterious case of Kana-san with his steady motif of exclaiming his love for big boobs and determination to resolve the mystery.  He’s joined by colleagues on-and-off screen in Momoka Asahi and Chihiro Nishikawa, the latter not to be confused with Chihiro Nishikawa of JVA.  While Nishikawa and Natsume continue the running gag conversating about big breasts, Momoka Asahi enters the picture much later as the third investigating team member when Natsume goes down with a well shark bite infection that haunts him from the inside out and puts him in the hospital.  From there, Nishikawa and Momoka take the reigns on investigation by not only tending to Natsume’s dwindling health but also interviewing internet paranormal sleuths Hiroshima Freddy, a Japanese horror influence in real life, as well as Black Story Kuro, who I imagine is another influencer but couldn’t confirm it.  Typically, the Japanese language has a ton of fluid inflections and tones that dictates situations and mood, but “Ring Shark” avoids much of the vocal ups-and-downs with a consistently level tone of flat and dry humor peppered with fear, arbitrary bickering, and a pinch of kawaii to sustain a semi-serious documentary style investigation.  Maya Mineo, Issei Kunisawa, Yacch Chara, Daiki Mizuno, Honey Trap, Umeki, and the wrestler known as The Shark fills out the cast.

“Ring Shark” is “Blair Witch Project” meets “The Ring.”  The latter having the most prominent appearance as the at home media, that was once titled, or probably is likely titled in Japan, as “Ido Shark,” is marketed for U.S. consumption because every moviegoer is either well versed or knows of Hideo Nakata’s “The Ring” series and its heebie-jeebies Samara spirit.  Instead of a cursed tape that summons Samara out of the depths of her murdered resting spot, a well, to kill anyone after a week of viewing said tape, “Ring Shark” only real connective tissue to “The Ring” is that there is a well in the story and a murdered girl’s body was dumped inside.  That’s it.  From there, the structure is more to the tune of “Blair Witch Project” with a pseudo-found footage of one social media’s disappearance igniting the Psychic Investigator Big Summer team to check it out after the tape is brought to their attention form Kanasama’s co-host.  The docu-style incorporates dry wit of interviewing shark experts, creature academics, urban legend connoisseurs, and thorough analysts and researchers, as well as themselves as angry villagers and a supernatural hand puppet shark head subverts their stratospheric sublayer with soul-chumming results.  Yet, none of everything just said really clicks in a flimsy and slapdashedly put together microbudget story derived for effect for true and absurd exploitation of sharks gone wild. 

“Ring Shark” swims right into SRS Cinema’s well-house with a brand-new DVD from the microbudget cult film distributor.  Upscaled to 1080p, the MPEG2 encoded, single layer DVD5 presents the Big Summer production ion a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Though upscaled to 1080p, the cell phone footage renders stretched limitations under the light of low-budget constraints.  Night vision and poor lighting coupled with closeups-to-extreme closeups, and shaky camera work dematerializes story-important images.  Natural lit and stationary camera work provide cleaner visuals in what is mostly a deluge of exposition and regular camera angles without atmospheric makeup.  The Japanese language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo provides lean composition with ample inherent surrounding ambience, picking up the natural wildlife chirping in the background, the vocal amplification of someone talking through a microphone, the hustle and bustle of a restaurant, etc. Dialogue isn’t impeded by the commercial phone camera recording that creates a rather good reproduction and diffusion of sound amongst the space.  Added audio effects, such as the shark’s growling or snarling, does feel unnaturally alienated from the rest of the audio but works to the film’s advantage despite the obvious hand puppetry.  English subtitles are burned in but do synch well and appear error free. There’s also what looks to be double English subtitles along with Japanese title cards or subtitles that are a part of the Youtube investigation and often coincide with the main English subtitles in a distracting, screen space absorbing real estate. The Japanese electro-rap graced static menu, which samples Lil Jon’s Yeeeah, contains no bonus feature selection; instead, the bonus content is right on the main menu with short film “Shark of the Dead” (8.26 minutes) and the “Ring Shark” trailer.  I love bad movie cover art and SRS Cinema’s “Ring Shark” is no exception with smokey-eyed, electrically charged, and monstrously toothy shark breaching from a little stone well underneath “The Ring”-font film title.  The disc is pressed with the same image and there are no inserts included.  The barely hour-long film, clocking in at 63-minutes, comes not rated and has a region free playback.

Last Rites: “Ring Shark” is a monumental prosaic mockumentary aimed to swell Sharksploitation into further ill-repute and disrepair with an unfunny and uninteresting undertaking of underwhelming pastiche.

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!