Junk

Mooshing together the "Reservoir Dogs" plot with a dose of "Re-Animator" and "Dawn of the Dead", this concerns a bunch of diamond thieves who meet up with mobsters at an abandoned military base, only to be ambushed by the living dead. Gleefully fast-paced, with zombies resembling the ones featured in "City of the Walking Dead"...i.e. the zombies look like they have mud all over their faces. Good gory fun, without the hassle of a plot. Too bad there ain't more of this kind of stuff these days. Most of the zombie stuff of late (House of the Dead, Resident Evil) treat zombies as just another shoot-'em-up element. Here they are the thrust of the story...what story there is.

"Junk" is as it's own name suggests, well junk really. A low budget Japanese zombie film that can neither impress with great visual effects nor strong acting or plot. But what does do and does well in my opinion, is to recreate the feeling and entertainment value of eighties Italian zombie flicks. In other words "Junk" is trashy fun.

After successfully pulling of a jewelry heist the group of four robbers head of towards an abandoned warehouse where the supposed buyer would be. Unknowingly to both parties, that same place was the dumping ground for a failed American military experiment on bringing the dead back to life. Needless to say what happens when our heroes arrive. It's a simple well known plot that doesn't demand any form of thinking. You just sit-down with a beer-pack and some popcorn in hand and enjoy the on screen carnage. The unpretentious design is what holds "Junk's" charm and of course the violence does also help in that matter.

The acting again in the spirit of Italian horror leaves something to be desired. The Japanese actors did relatively well for this sort of film. Which basically means they didn't get on my nerves with absurd performances or just monotonic line reading. American actors on the other hand were awful, unbearable. Director Atsushi Muroga should have written their characters off plot and sticked with only Japanese actors. The reason for the bad performance does not fully fall on the actors's hands. In this case it's easy to see that the language barrier and Muroga's inability to properly direct the English speaking cast due to his own apparent lack of knowledge in that language are the true problems.

The action is fairly good. Practically most of the movie's running time is filled with shootouts, zombie attacks or both combined. Muroga keeps a fast pace and with a short running time "Junk" doesn't get boring. As any other zombie movie so is this one packed with gore. Necks bitten, legs and arms cut off, people being eaten, heads smashed it's got the needed ingredients to deliver a fun experience.

Atsushi Muroga' "Junk" makes for a delightful yet forgettable zombie film. Mainstream audience should definitely pass the chance on seeing it. But highly recommendable to fans of the trashy low-budget horror genre.

After a robbery,a group of thieves meets up with the Yakuza at an old abandoned factory in order to exchange money and jewels.However unknown to them the factory was an old military facility which was working on reanimating the dead.And they succeeded,meaning the factory is loaded with bloodthirsty zombies."Junk" is slowly getting a minor cult following,because it has creepy,old-style zombies that are a combination of Romero/Fulci/O'Bannon's zombies.The gore is plentiful and the feel of the film is very reminiscent of the Italian gut-munchers of the late 1970/early 1980 period.The film doesn't take itself too seriously and is pretty silly at times.There is plenty of gory mayhem on display-lots of headshots,zombies biting parts of their victims and eating intestines etc."Junk" is extremely entertaining,so fans of Japanese horror or zombie cinema won't be disappointed.

In an abandoned factory on the Japanese island of Okinawa, the U.S. army secretly developed a serum called "DNX" that is able to bring the dead back to life. Something went wrong and all scientists were killed. Now meet Saki and her gang. They just robbed a jeweller and are on their way to meet some Yakuza for a big deal. Guessed their meeting point? It doesn't take long time and an army of bloodthirsty zombies is after them. Soon everybody is running and fighting for his life...

20 years after the heydays of ultra-gory Italian zombie movies, the Japanese start to produce somehow very similar movies like this one. Heavily influenced by such films as George A. Romero's zombie trilogy, Italian and Spanish shockers from the late 70's and early 80's and the 1992 Japanese film "Living Dead in Tokyo Bay", this is a fun splatter film, and as such it delivers what fans would expect. The gory special effects are done very well most of the time - if you can't stand dismemberment, heads blown into pieces and gut-munching zombies, stay far away! On the other side, splatter movie fans will have plenty of fun with this movie.

A group of jewel thieves is to meet some Yakuza members at an abandoned facility to hock the hot ice...little did anyone seem to know that this "facility" was a former military installation that was doing work on the dead, namely - bringing them back to life. Guess it worked, 'cuz now the place is crawling with the undead. The jewelry deal goes bad, and now we have some people to supply lunch for the zombies...

JUNK is a pretty cool zombie film. Nothing really ground-breaking or spectacular, and seems to be much more related to the American, Romero-type zombie films than the typically whacked-out Asian stuff. The story is pretty simple, there's plenty of gore to go around, and the film is never really self-indulgent or too serious. A fun way to spend a couple of hours, but not a "great" film either. I personally tend to like JUNK less than most others that I talk to....still would recommend a look- 7.5/10