Never, ever doubt low-budget, independent film production. More can sometimes be achieved with a mere few dollars, a camera, and sheer determination than can be dreamt up with all the support of major studios and enormous casts and crews. The nearest points of comparison one may drum up here are titles of an equally low-grade nature, like Shinya Tsukamoto's 'Tetsuo' or at most Peter Jackson's 'Dead-alive,' but let there be no doubt that 'Anatomia extinction' is a creation all its own. Even with modest resources filmmaker Yoshihiro Nishimura gives us blood, gore, and effects that are gnarly and imaginative, and furthermore illustrates shrewd ingenuity in terms of sets, costume design, and fundamental orchestration of shots and scenes. That's to say nothing of the near-future setting, a fraction of a hair removed from reality; very carefully laid out scene writing and dialogue; and the narrative that weaves together growing madness, murder, and the real-life issues of what constitutes sustainable population - all swirled together in a saga of dark misanthropic fantasizing and bombastic violence. The production values may show their limits, but this 1995 romp is a total blast, a resplendent slice of horror that holds up better than some movies that have benefited from wide-scale release.
Star Kisei Ishizuka unreservedly embraces the wild journey of the unnamed protagonist and he's clearly have a great time, not least with all the tangible, visceral creations that Nishimura gives him throughout. The same is true to only a slightly lesser extent of Tomoko Haseyama, given the task as the "BCG" news anchor of cheerfully reporting and encouraging murder sprees. From particular and very active cinematography to sharp editing, every element here is bent toward accentuating the infectious zeal of the fictional "engineer" movement and the vibrant energy of the carnage. I'm also a big fan of Osamu Mizukami's original music, themes that are at once harsh and dark and wry and cheeky, befitting the overall tone of the feature. The filmmaker had a grand vision that's so colorful and creative that it well exceeds the bounds of the means he had to realize it; we see the artifice, but it doesn't matter. 'Anatomia extinction' is pointedly swift and small, a picture so far removed from the mainstream that it's almost experimental, but it's inescapably fun and gruesome even in its reduced capacity, and made with all the terrific skill and intelligence that Nishimura so obviously cultivated so early in his career from a love of cinema, and the outrageous. By the nature of the violence it won't appeal to all, any more than the genre does generally, yet the end result very ably scratches that itch for horror, and I think anyone who appreciates such fare will feel right at home here. Clocking in at under one hour, 'Anatomia extinction' is a superb piece of indie film-making that shows what can be accomplished outside major channels, and I'm pleased to give it my hearty recommendation!
