Matango Review

I purchased Matango on DVD back in 2005. I had heard about the movie several years earlier and, to be honest, I didn’t think it sounded like a great movie. A movie about mushroom people? Yeah, that doesn’t sound entertaining. But it’s ended up being one of my favorite films.

Synopsis: A group of friends were enjoying a sunny afternoon in yacht on the Pacific Ocean; but a storm rolls over them and threatens to take them out. Luckily, the group survives, but the boat suffers enough damage to be ineffective in taking them back to Japan. They end up stranded on an island in the Bonin Island chain. After discovering an abandoned ship, the group makes it their home and begin making repairs on the yacht, building signal fires, and foraging for food.

Along the way, they begin to unravel the mystery behind the missing crew that got themselves stranded on the island a year earlier. They begin to figure out that a mushroom, named Matango, destroys the human nervous system and turns the person into a mushroom as well.

As food begins to dwindle, everyone starts to turn on one another. At the same time, some in the group start to eat the mushrooms on the island out of the necessity to survive. Eventually, Murai is the only individual to make it off the island. He is found a few days after his leaving the island. He is admitted into a psychiatric ward where he reveals that, while on his sailing trip home, he, too, gave in and ate mushrooms. Murai ends the movie with a short monologue saying that what happened to him and his friends on the island is no different than living in a city like Tokyo: people will always be out for their own interests and will stab anyone in the back in order to survive.

Story: Kimura has written a wonderful story here! His paralleling life in the city to what people would more than likely behave in nature is well-developed, dark, and cynical. The gradual degrading of relationships and the incremental rise of introducing the haunting mushroom people is well done!

Kimura paces the story really nicely and gives us enough background on each character to get a glimpse at who they truly are. I get a hunch that Yoshida was Kimura’s favorite character to write as he steals the show and really sets the pace for the decline of community within the group.

This is an extraordinary story with an interesting twist of making the mushroom the “villain,” if you will, of the story. Yet, the mushroom people are only briefly seen in the movie itself. When a writer is able to get the audience to focus on his heroes (although here it’s debatable to call most of them heroes), he has done an exceptional job!

10/10

Special Effects: There isn’t a whole lot to say about special effects in this movie, because it’s not a film, like a Godzilla film, that involves extravagant costumes, miniatures, etc. Although there is a little bit of everything, just not to the extent of a Godzilla film.

The set decoration is phenomenal, particularly on the stranded ship that our characters call their home once stranded on the island. The mold-ridden and dilapidated vessel creates an eerie atmosphere that captures the mystery of the island itself and the fate of the characters.

The mushroom people makeup is done well. However, the costumes of the mushroom people, in full mushroom form, isn’t quite as convincing. Granted, the coloring and anatomy of the costumes make them wonderful to look at, but due to the enormous mushroom top, it seems as if trying to fully execute movement in those costumes was difficult. Nevertheless, those costumes look a lot better than some of the other Toho created creatures (such as King Kong).

10/10

Acting: Anyone familiar with much of the Showa Godzilla series, or any other Toho science fiction films, will notice many of these actors making numerous appearances in those films. We get an all-star cast here!

Akira Kubo has a wide range of acting ability. It not only shows here, but in his other films as well. Kumi Mizuno always plays the role of a seductive, yet dangerous, female lead successfully. Although here she ends up pulling it off to a magnificent level; more so than in any of the other roles I’ve seen her in.

Kenji Sahara, like Akira Kubo, has a wide acting range as well. He can play the most benevolent hero, or the most wicked villains. Whichever role he’s cast in, he can do it and do it very well. His Koyama character is one that you love to despise and see him get his just desserts in the end. Hiroshi Koizumi, at least the films I’ve seen him in, tends to be a bit more type-cast than most of the other actors in this film (although Yoshio Tsuchiya tends to play quite a few villain-esque roles himself). Koizumi gives us a different character, a character in Sakuta that is strong, yet extremely coy and cold.

Yoshio Tsuchiya’s Kasai is probably the character that many in the audience will certainly hate the most. His wealth and his strutting his social status around the group while on the island is deplorable; which makes Tsuchiya a wonderful actor if he can get the audience to feel a particular way towards his on-screen character. Hiroshi Tachikawa, as Yoshida, steals the show. He starts off as a playful type of character, but morphs into a smug individual that begins the domino effect of societal degradation. Miki Yashiro’s Akiko is very timid. While we don’t see much of her in the film, and also the fact the character isn’t given as much as the others, her performance is still wonderful!

To begin the movie where you like the characters, then end up despising most of them, means the actors have done their job masterfully! With this film being a very character-driven story, it is important to have actors deliver the type of performance to help aid in the film’s atmosphere and the eventual chaos that will ensue within the group.

10/10

Human Drama: Normally, most films within this genre focus on the creatures or other outer-world beings. Here, this isn’t the case…and that is a very welcome change! We aren’t given too few or, as in most films, too many characters. All of the characters serve an important personality and societal archetype. While not every archetype may be presented here, it’s enough without the film getting bogged down by a bunch of nonsense, which could be easy to do in a film, such as this, where there are enough characters to begin with.

10/10

Overall: Not enough good can be said about Matango! A film that, on the surface, sounds as bad as many American B-movies, ends up being one of the best-made films the studio has produced and a film that is loved by many fans within the genre. This film was made during what is known as the Golden Age of Toho and the end result clearly states that fact.

Ishiro Honda and the rest of the crew did a wonderful job in producing the film! I must say that this is probably one of Honda’s best films. The cast does a stellar job at bringing to life vibrant characters that you find yourself loving and hating at various points in the film.

In the end, Matango is a film that needs to be seen by any fan of science fiction. I will even go so far as to say that anyone, who is interested in watching a well-developed character-driven story should watch this movie. This is a film that should even be shown in film classes to illustrate what writers should do in order to bring about great characters and a chilling atmosphere when the story calls for it. I highly recommend Matango! It certainly has become one of my all-time favorite films!

10/10