Vampire Clay (Chi wo suu nendo) (Soichi Umezawa, 2017)

[HungFist]

Finally! SFX make-up artist Soichi Umezawa's first feature length film. Not much info available yet except these few photos and title that roughly translates as "the clay that sucks blood".
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7026370/reference





Will premier next month in Japan at Kineka Omori's Summer Horror Festival
- http://horror-hiho.com/

I've been keeping this guy on an eye for a few years now, hoping he'll prove himself as the new Yoshihiro Nishimura now that the old is, well, you know. He first gained some attention with the special effects showcase M is for Middle, which eventually was included in The ABCs of Death 2 as "Y is for Youth", and later did a far more mature psychological body horror short Thorn, both starring his wife Asuka Kurosawa.

[HungFist]

A tiny bit of footage in the Horror Film Festival trailer:
https://youtu.be/Nhwp8HbohDc?t=45s

(from 0:45-1:00)

[Guro Taku]

The English title is VAMPIRE CLAY and the film will have its US premiere at Fantastic Fest

[Guro Taku]

Japanese and International posters for VAMPIRE CLAY:

[Guro Taku]

And an English subtitled trailer while we're at it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJMUspZ6bXg

[HungFist]

Just screened at Yubari Rebellion Fest (Yoshihiro Nishimura's counter attact againts Yubari Fanta, which he feels has gotten boring), and of course I wasn't there... damn.

[HungFist]

JP DVD and BD coming 2018/07/04
- http://kingmovies.jp/library/kixf-559

[HungFist]

Caught this on Amazon Video and I'm sad to say it bored me to death.

On the positive front there's an almost fanatic avoidance of CGI in favour of practical effects on display here.

The film is however strangely dull in technical terms: the music is terrible, the video and sound editing lack any punch and the ending is extended beyond any sense.

To make matters worse the storyline about desperate art students attacked by blood thirsty clay (yes!) is as boring as it gets. The cast is made of unknown idols + Japan's Nic "I do any film" Cage Kanji Tsuda and Umezawa's wife Asuka Kurosawa.

Don't expect splatter either. It's restrained enough to have landed a G rating in Japan, though it would still equal to a soft R in the United States.

[Guro Taku]

There's a sequel that'll make the festival rounds this autumn:

[Guro Taku]

Trailer for the second part:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BH3idX7ouc

Not a bad trailer, actually, in my opinion. A number of cool visuals and practical effects on display. Those were the best thing about the first film as well.