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When you hear what We Are Little Zombies is about, the concept that it could have more than a little bit of influence from the world of video-games may come as a shock. After all, the story of a quartet of kids bonding over the mutual loss of their parents is hardly something that suggests 8-bit fun. However, it’s a credit to writer/director Makoto Nagahisa that it somehow just makes sense. Now, this may not be for everyone, but if the unusual marriage of content and style, filtered through a singular tone, works for you, this is going to really float your boat. The film is a mix of drama and dramedy elements, telling the story of four children going through something both terrible and also fairly stirring. Hikari (Keita Ninomiya), Ikuko (Sena Nakajima), Ishi (Satoshi Mizuno), and Takemura (Mondo Okumura) first meet, they’ve each just become orphans.

Like a miniature version of Camus' Meursault, Hikari (Keita Ninomiya) fails to cry at his parents' funeral. "Reality is stupid," he says impatiently. They never paid him much attention anyway so he's no stranger to making his way through life alone. It's his good fortune that he will no longer have to do so, because that day, at the crematorium, he meets three other children who have recently been orphaned and they decide to run away together to have adventures.

Bold Takemura (Mondo Okumura) comes from a troubled background where he had plenty of ugliness to deal with before his parents' suicide, but also a punk older brother from whom he learned guitar. Ikuko (Sena Nakajima), possessed of a stare that could wither whole forests and with zero tolerance for the creepy adult attention it attracts, is a piano protege who relishes her newfound freedom. Ishi (Satoshi Mizuno) is a wide-eyed,...

"We're zombies. We're dead. We're dying. But we're alive. I don't know which... So we might as well do what we want." Oscilloscope Labs has debuted an official Us trailer for a funky fun Japanese experimental indie drama titled We Are Little Zombies, a very dark comedy rock musical one-of-a-kind film. This first premiered at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals last year, and will be getting a Us release later in the year. The film is about four kids whose parents have all died, and they come together to form a rock band. "Tragedy, comedy, music, social criticism, and teenage angst are all subsumed in this eccentric cinematic tsunami." Starring Keita Ninomiya, Satoshi Mizuno, Mondo Okumura, and Sena Nakajima as the four main kids. This kind of became an under-the-radar hit on the festival circuit last year, and it's getting a proper release sometime this year - keep an eye out for it soon.

Stars: Satoshi Mizuno, Sena Nakajima, Keita Ninomiya, Mondo Okumura | Written and Directed by Makoto Nagahisa

Directed and with a screenplay penned by Makoto Nagahisa, in his feature-film debut as both writer and man-in-the-chair, We Are Little Zombies is a Japanese drama film about four teenage orphans who form a rock band.

There is a lot, and I mean A Lot, going on with the film, and while I didn’t mind that (and in fact enjoyed how crazy it became at times) I think the sheer rapid and packed style of it could irk some viewers. There are slow moments, moments that take their time and build up the story in a less musical way, and these help calm things down, giving us foundations for our leads. It is the ingenious and bloody brilliant way that the film deals with the stages of grief. We’ve seen films deal with the topic before,...

No pulsating, psychedelic, pop-punk phantasmagoria ought to be as moving and smart as “We Are Little Zombies.” But Makoto Nagahisa’s explosively ingenious and energetic debut (imagine it as the spiritual offspring of Richard Lester and a Harajuku Girl) holds the high score for visual and narrative invention, as well as boasting a [insert gigantic-beating-heart Gif] and braaaains, too. The gonzo adventures of four poker-faced Japanese 13-year-olds who bond over their mutual lack of emotion following sudden orphanhood, it reimagines the old “stages of grief” thing as a progression through 13 erratic levels of a video game, complete with mini-games and side quests. And if its manic, 8-bit aesthetic seems hyperactively inappropriate for such a somber scenario — like it does grief wrong — that too, can be interpreted as a generous insight into the mourning process: Who among us, upon being bereaved, has ever believed they’re doing grief right?

Certainly, little Hikari (Keita Ninomiya) does not.

We Are Little Zombies

Japan’s Makoto Nagahisa makes his directorial debut with We Are Little Zombies, produced by Shinichi Takahashi, Tahei Tamanishi, Haruki Yokoyama, and Haruhiko Hasegawa. The project is also the feature debut of Dp Hiroaki Takeda, who worked on Nagahisa’s award winning 2017 short “And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool” and a cast of newcomers includes Keita Ninomiya, Satoshi Mizuno, Mondo Okumura, and Sena Nakajima who are joined by Rinko Kikucho and Yuki Kudo. Nagahisa was the Short Film Grand Prize Jury Winner at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

Gist: Written by Makoto Nagahisa, We Are Little Zombies turns on four 13-year-olds whose parents die and they form a band (which sounds similar to something like Lukas Moodysson’s 2013 title We Are the Best).…...

It’s hard to believe it’s almost time for a new year of the Sundance Film Festival, but we’re now less than two months away, and this writer is extremely excited to head to Park City once again, especially after digging into Sundance’s initial lineup announcement today. Not only does their Midnight slate look insanely great, but there are a ton of films running in Sundance’s other programming tracks that I am beyond excited to see in January.

Some of the highlights from today’s lineup announcement include Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile which chronicles the life of Ted Bundy (played by Zac Efron) through the experiences of his girlfriend; Paradise Hills, which stars Emma Roberts, Milla Jovovich, and Awkwafina; Relive from producer Jason Blum; Dan Gilroy’s Buzzsaw; and the Alien-themed documentary Memory. I’ve gone ahead and broken down all the titles...