Metamorphosis

Woman discovers that her husband is turning into something other than human.

Keiko (Aki Morita) is an ordinary housewife. But her husband Yoshiaki (Kazunari Aizawa) is having a nightmarish seizure every night. He's seems to be slowly beginning to lose his humanity. Not only that his body is also transforming into a monster.

Interesting low budget sci-fi movie. Husband is changing into a monster, but the wife continues to love him. Soon the authorities find out about Yoshiaki's transformation, and tries to arrest him.

Good theme and development of the story. For the budget, the story was pretty respectable, and worth the watch.

A new kind of monster movie, that I hope more will be made in the future.

Henge (i.e. Metamorphosis) is a 2011 Japanese movie that's a low budget flick to say the least. WOW! I wasn't expecting such a bare bones flick when I went into watching this thing, but it gets the job done well enough somehow (which is impressive when factoring in its cost). It's basically part love story, part monster movie.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

For those of you who aren't aware, this is film that involves a man who starts experiencing seizures and loss of memory every few days. Then, his condition takes a turn for the worse, as he soon starts morphing into some type of murderous creature that feeds on humans in order to survive.

The man's wife initially tries to get him help, but it's of no use. Fearful of what he's becoming, she then attempts to hide from him, then kill him, but she can't do it. Eventually, she just resigns herself to stand by him as a dutiful wife no matter what she must do; this entails seducing men to bring home so he can eat them, and taking him on the run when the cops come sniffing around with their toy cap guns. There's some mumbo jumbo about him being some life force creature from the time when humans and animals were connected, then, a 1960's Godzilla movie breaks out.

This movie is pretty wacky and cheap and ridiculous. It's not what I would call a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it is somewhat endearing, and it kinda works. The wife's efforts to help her husband along from point A to point B are interesting and kind of heartwarming in a way. It's only about 50 minutes long unless there is some extended version I'm unaware of, so it goes about its business rather quickly until it arrives at its conclusion; a conclusion, I might add, that must be seen in order to be believed.

I think the pizza I ordered last night cost more than it took to make this movie. The "special effects" here are laughably cheap (from rubber suits, to body parts, to toy model sets). Strangely, this just seems to add to the movie's charm, not detract from it. The two leads did a respectable enough job of what was asked of them, and there's an oddly effective balance between their personal interactions, and the monster side of the story throughout the film. All in all, it's a neat little story that's streamlined and to the point, and, I found it all rather likable for what it is. It makes for a nice change of pace from the norm.

I can't believe I'm writing this, but I'm actually going to recommend this movie. Though, I can't justify giving it any more than 6 out of 10 stars.