Kenichi Ugana‘s “The Gesuidouz” is a delightful deadpan oddity about a Japanese punk group, whose 26-year-old lead singer Hanako (Natsuko) is convinced she’ll be dead at 27, the same age as Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain. The quartet’s sardonic musical energy translates visually at every turn, with bright, subdued visual affectations that find humor in the morose.
The result is a fluffy, self-assured ode to creativity and finding one’s voice through genre cinema — the group’s songs and albums revolve around Hollywood horror films — with a particular viewer in mind. The film is, on one hand, undoubtedly Japanese in its sensibilities. Natsuko translates Hanako’s despondent mood into reflections
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