This review is informed by material from a written interview with the directors.
Co-Directors Nozomi Tomaki and Kyosuke Koizumi are self-described lovers brought together by their passion for extreme gore films and desire to push boundaries. Their 30-minute POV found footage “cruelty film” KILLMAGEDDON shimmers with the sick, exhilarating energy of shared sensorial obsession. Tomaki and Koizumi set out to create “violence of images and sound,” and I’ve never seen or felt anything like it. Rarely does a film feel so fresh, exciting, and truly wild. This brutal short is an exhilarating sensory mindfuck that goes hard, dark, and nasty at breakneck speeds before shifting into unexpectedly heartfelt territory. It’s best not to say too much about the plot. Go in blind and let it wash over you.
Unlike many in-world-camera films which situate the viewer within a preliminary text frame, KILLMAGEDDON comes screaming out of nowhere with no context, no explanation for where we are or why. The first twenty electric seconds could almost be a music video. A dark screen pulses with upbeat synth percussion, a woman’s modulated, reverbed voice blending rhythmically into the upbeat original score. She’s excited about something, meeting someone. It feels like a party. The padlocked door might have opened to an underground club. The first line of dialogue defies its bubblegum sing-song tone, fracturing something in this first of many disconnects: “You got two! Don’t kill them yet. It’s gonna be fun!”
We’re swept along by the energetic pulse of the music — willing participants, complicit.
The door opens. The handheld camera swoops with a searching, knowing gaze, catching up: you started without me? It’s a bloodbath in here. Two eviscerated victims gasp and twitch like fish out of water, flopping limbs and bulging eyes in dark puddles of their blood. You can smell the grimy, humid, blood-streaked basement through the screen. You’re doubting your choices. What the fuck are you watching? It can’t be real. You hope it’s not.
My pupils dilated to dinner plates as I reveled in the horror of my complicity in this senseless violence. First-person cinema has never felt worse, but I’ve never loved it more. Itsuro Sugiyama Daifuku and Saku Murasame give grotesque (and this is the highest compliment) performances as sadistic killers in manic, effervescent love. The cruelty is exhilarating in its frenetic excess.
KILLMAGEDDON is an extremely challenging film that should not be attempted by the squeamish. But as upsetting as it is in its blood-soaked, entrail-ripping intensity, it’s impossible to look away. Rarely has a film pulled me into such a profound feeling of psychosis from the jump. It entranced me completely. And then another film emerged from inside the first to leave me breathless.
KILLMAGEDDON is among the most intensely visceral found footage films I’ve ever seen, and I’m so grateful to the team at UFF for bringing it to the big screen for its US premiere. Though they’ve had some trouble reaching wider audiences at home in Japan and abroad because of their films’ extreme content, KILLMAGEDDON has won several awards, including the Grand Prix and Audience Award at the Student Cruelty Film Festival (with notable jury member Takashi Shimizu) and Audience Award at the Kanazawa Film Festival.
Tomaki and Koizumi are an incredible creative duo, and the KILLMAGEDDON deserves to be seen as widely as possible. The filmmakers are seeking distribution and would love to extend their film into a feature shot overseas. Someone should give them a chance to show us what else they can do – and they’d also love to shoot a segment for V/H/S.
Tags: Found-Footage, Itsuro Sugiyama Daifuku, Kanazawa Film Festival, Killmageddon, Kyosuke Koizumi, Nozomi Tomaki, Saku Murasame, Takashi Shimizu, Unnamed Found Footage Festival, Unnamed Found Footage Festival Vol 8, V/H/S, Violet Burns
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