Horror films here have traditionally featured vengeful female ghosts, but Japanese filmmakers do also take cues from Hollywood, where zombies have long flourished since George Romero¡¯s seminal ¡°Night of the Living Dead¡± (1968) and ¡°Dawn of the Dead¡± (1978). Even so, Japanese zombie films, such as Hiroshi Shinagawa¡¯s ¡°Z Island¡± (¡°Z Airando,¡± 2015) and Takashi Miike¡¯s ¡°Yakuza Apocalypse¡± (¡°Gokudo Daisenso,¡± 2015), have trouble taking the undead seriously.
¡°I Am a Hero¡± (¡°Ai Amu a Hiro¡°), Shinsuke Sato¡¯s disaster thriller based on Kengo Hanazawa¡¯s hit manga of the same name, is a rare local film that uses zombies for scares, not punch lines. In fact, its lurching menaces do their job so hair-raisingly well that the film arrives in the theaters with an R-15 rating, meaning junior high school kids ¡ª usually a prime target audience for manga adaptations ¡ª can¡¯t see it.
To fans of Romero¡¯s masterworks, if not their many imitators, ¡°I Am a Hero¡± will look derivative, though its full-bore zombie action may win their grudging admiration. And compared to the many so-called thrillers in Japan that offer only the appearance of action, with blood and bodies airbrushed out, ¡°I Am a Hero¡± is the real unironic deal.
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