Meatball Machine (2005)

(In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) No one does insane horror comedies like the Japanese, and Meatball Machine is yet another example why: Complicating a romance with alien parasites, extreme body horror, biomechanical monsters and a tragic climactic fight between ex-lovers, it’s a classic example of splatter horror so extreme that it becomes almost comic. But while it’s cartoonish, it’s not really funny. Obviously designed by directors Yūdai Yamaguchi and Jun’ichi Yamamoto to shock the mundanes, it’s a film with just enough plot to stuff in as many gory special effects as the director wants to pay for. Body horror is the currency of the gags here, and you’re not really meant to follow exactly the finer points of the narrative. Shots after shots are meant to showcase the gore effects at a frantic pace that’s supposed to minimize the questions we may be tempted to ask along the way. It definitely plays to an audience that is somehow conditioned to expect things like this, leaving everyone else wondering what’s going on. I can tolerate such movies well enough (actually, I like them more than more realistic horror films that seem psychopathic from their inception) but it’s not as if I actively seek them out or give them more than a moment’s notice. Meatball Machine is over-the-top horror that clearly knows what it’s doing — but it consciously closes itself from a wider audience. Even a more overly comedic bend would have done wonders to make the film more accessible.