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Review

Boasting enough pulpy storylines and genre influences for a dozen Japanese cult favorites, Moon Child director Takahisa Zeze actually turns this dizzying collage of styles to the film's advantage, and delivers an engagingly outlandish genre trip. Constructed as a vehicle for the two eerily beautiful Japanese pop stars Gackt (who also co-wrote the film) and Hyde, Moon Child follows these two friends from childhood as they advance in the criminal underworld of the near future, and Zeze encompasses both bullet-flying gangster action and supernatural vampire horror in his ambitious film.

Friends since their childhood spent living on the streets, Sho (Gackt) and Kei (Hyde) advance in the violent yakuza world, although Sho always feels that he is doomed to walk in his mentor friend Kei's footsteps. Of course, Kei has a bit of an edge, for he has been a vampire with eternal life ever since an encounter with a bloodsucker as a child. Over time, the friendship between Sho and Kei becomes corrupted by ambition, and the conflict over their shared love for the same woman, until a final confrontation becomes inevitable.

Prolific filmmaker Zeze (a former sex movie director with recent mainstream success) brings a heavily stylized sting to the proceedings, and yet amidst all the heavy ammo and blood-draining, there remains a surprisingly effective emotional core to the two heroes' bond (not to mention a homoerotic subtext, and not just because of all the tight leather pants).

 -- Travis Crawford