WTF Japan?!?: Kill Devil

It's a Battle Royale!  I make no bones about being mixed on Battle Royale and hating Battle Royale II.  With all the shit that I watch, it's still rare that I stop watching a film before it's over.  Granted, it happened twice this month (wait to see which ones it's for!), but it's still quite rare.  I gave up on Battle Royale II after about forty-five minutes because it was just painful.  Well, today's film- Kill Devil (or Kill the Devil) is slightly-better.  It's worse than the original film.  More importantly, it just feels like a sad substitute.  Say what you will about Battle Royale II- please do, I encourage it- but it felt like it's own movie.  That movie was sucky, but the point is still the same.  This is pretty much Battle Royale, but with a few minor tweaks, a smaller cast and none of the budget.  If you think that I'm joking, then read on...

A young man wakes up on a beach with no memory of how he got there.  What is he doing there?  Who is this mute young man with him?  What is the deal with those bracelets?

After about twenty-minutes (but it feels like an hour), they finally explain the plot.  There's a thought!  In 2017, we discovered the 'Kill People' Gene.  No, really.

This movie stops being a 'sausage-fest' as the remaining male cast members- random death ahoy- meet up with a group of female prisoners on the same island.  Don't worry- most of them die off within minutes too.  Hi, pacing!

You won't believe what a weed-whacker can do.  Seriously, you won't.  This effect is amazingly-cheap and unrealistic.

Here's a first (to my knowledge): a midget, Japanese scientist.  More power to you, Japanese Peter Dinklage!

The whole pretense of this controlled-experiment falls apart when the group is just brought in, has the story explained to them and is left together.  It's okay, since they'll lose their memory tomorrow and start the cycle all over again...or will they?!?

The group makes it to their getaway vehicle- a surfboard!- but all of them kill each other before escaping.  Everyone is dead and the experiment is a failure...or a success. I was never quite clear on what their goal was.  So...

Oh wait- Mr. Weed-Whacker is still alive, but gets shot to death moments later.  His ghost speaks to us...and dances.  This goes on for five minutes in the Alternate Ending on the DVD too.  No, really.  The End.

What a lazy rip-off.  What else is there to say about this movie.  It's a poor man's version of Battle Royale.  None of the interesting characters are here.  Mr .Weed-Whacker is a poor substitute for the jaded killers from the original film.  There is no Takeshi Kitano!  This is almost like The Asylum version of Battle Royale.  It's kind of similar, but no effort was put into it, it has a tiny budget and it's very disappointing.  Considering that Devilman was about a demon-man and The Killing of Satan was about someone killing Satan, how disappointing is the title here?  It's just the name of the exercise, something that those involved don't even call it.  There a couple of interesting ideas buried in here- including the head scientist putting his daughter in the study- but they are not enough.  This movie commits the cardinal sin of movies- it's boring.  A film about a bunch of people killing each other is boring.  On the plus side, we have this thing to look forward to...

Up next, a movie about a man with a chainsaw.  However, this killer has the ability to jump out of the moon...and be an hallucination...kind of.  Stay tuned...