China Doll Chopping: Bloody Night A Go Go (2005)

Bloody Night A Go Go (Japan, 2005)

Rating: **

Starring: Mitsuru Akaboshi, Maria Kitazawa, Wataru Koga

In just a short span of an hour, Bloody Night A Go Go (2005) shows us what Japanese surrealism could do when merged with the typical teen slasher horror.

Seven teenagers decided to sneak inside a mall after hours to try out its new Summer attraction, an indoor haunted house, just for the fun irony of it all as the shopping center does have a reputation of being haunted by the ghost of a young boy named Kenji. Unbeknownst to the group, Nanako, the youngest of them, appears to have a bit of history with the ghost boy and it's tied to a double murder that deeply traumatized her. Not long after the gang settle in the empty mall and starts canoodling inside the scare house, someone donning an overgrown china doll head, wielding a meat cleaver and dishing out some mean acrobatics begins hunting them down one by one. Could it be the infamous child ghost spooking up the place? Or perhaps it's an actual loon loose inside the mall?

In the meantime, we have an oddly-acted cooking show full of Chinese stereotypes, four girls working at a maid cafe hanging out in an apartment telling ghost stories and a ten minute post-credit rap battle, I kid you not.

Bloody Night A Go Go (2005) flirts its standard bodycount story of doomed kids getting hacked to death by crazed maniacs with the strange and abstract, loaded with candy color lighting, uncanny camera effects and a schizophrenic direction. The resulting show is near-parodic and nonsensical in its structure, assaulting conventional horror tropes with showcases of trippy visuals and overacting talents yet still maintaining a good service of gimmicky deaths and bizarre villains. It's practically weird for the sake of weird, playing well into its offbeat execution that isn't without its hammy charms and fair laughs that often dips in the edge of silliness. Admittedly, there are moments where the movie tries to be serious and creepily atmospheric, but the effect is mostly lost within the whacky eccentricities of the tone, especially when you have scenes where the clunky-headed slasher effortlessly teleports and somersaults their way into slaying their victims before striking a mean pose, or when a wad of fermented beans is lethally sticky to the point it can tear someone's face off. So, less of your everyday paint-by-number dead teenager pic and more of a chaotic abstraction disguised as one. 

Without a doubt, Bloody Night A Go Go (2005) is a difficult film to recommend, particularly if one is not in tune with quirky horror done in low-budget unrealism, but if you're are looking for something a tad out of the ordinary for your slasher needs then this one is a fair enough pick to try out. Yes, it can be a bit much, but if you can see the uniquely funny and cheesy side of this short Japanese feature then this little obscurity might be worth at least a viewing.

Bodycount:

1 male and 1 female hacked to death with a meat cleaver

1 male slashed with a meat cleaver (dream)

1 female hacked to death with a meat cleaver (dream)

1 male killed inside a photobooth, corpse photographed (dream)

1 female hacked with a meat cleaver (dream)

1 male gets a mannequin hand stabbed into his face

1 female electrocuted to death with live wires to the groin

1 male had his head vacuum-sealed, suffocated

1 female gets fire extinguisher foam sprayed down her throat, killed

1 male had his face smothered in bean paste and stuck on a locker, torn off by force

1 female had her throat slashed with a meat cleaver

1 female hacked on the face with a meat cleaver

Total: 13