J-Horror Oddities - DECAY OF THE PERSON (2023)
A zombie survival woman revenge movie featuring a nude woman with a bow and arrow? Where do I sign up?
Welcome to J-Horror Oddities, a series dedicated to discovering all those hidden Japanese horror movies that no one knows about. In the previous edition, we looked at an IT clone about a little girl whose imaginary clown gets revenge for her.
And now I present some more gritty and adult. The awfully titled Decay Of The Person, a horror drama film about a young girl who grows into a young woman with a thirst for revenge against the living, and the dead.
WARNING: This article contains NSFW images.
Asuka Shibu, an actress known for her small TV parts, takes on the main role of Koko, a young woman who has developed a very strong sense of survival skills in a world that’s now populated by the living dead and the deadly living.
This is a movie of two clear parts. The first part sets up the story of Koko as a young girl, escaping to the mountains with her father and a couple of survivors, while the second part jumps 15 years into the future.
The movie starts with an excited man thinking he has scored big by finding an unopened jar of booze, but his excitement quickly turns to horror when a strange sludge falls from the sky and turns him into a rabid monster. And that’s how people are initially turned in this movie. There is no other explanation for it, nor do we ever find out what it is or when it came from. So just accept it.
We’re then introduced to Koko and her lovely parents. They have a good family dynamic, and to use a word made cringeworthy on Reddit, they are quite “wholesome”. Oh God I really hate that word. It’s in this opening scene where we are introduced to Koko’s one and only idiosyncrasy - she likes to bite on her index finger when thinking. This becomes both important and highly annoying later on in the movie when it wants to remind you that THIS GROWN WOMAN IS THE LITTLE GIRL FROM THE START!
Things turn real for Koko and her friend really quickly when a boy asks to meet her at a shrine after school. As Koko and her friend watch the boy squirming from a distance, he is then eaten by a zombie. At the same time some creepy guy finds a good looking but very much dead woman on the side of the road and takes her back to his apartment. Before he can pull her panties off to do god-knows-what to her, she comes alive and eats him. That’s the end of that guy.
Meanwhile, Koko and her friend rush back to a small print shop run by Koko’s mother’s ex-boss. They’ve just escaped two teenaged schoolgirls and an older man who have turned into zombies, and now they need to avoid the ex-boss, who has also been turned. But it’s too late for Koko’s friend, she gets a huge chunk taken out of her head. Koko’s father manages to save the day but leaves the friend behind. Escaping to safety, he gives Koko the sad news. Her mother is dead, and they need to get away from their home. They hitch a ride with a couple who want to go to the mountains to survive.
And now is when the fun part of the movie begins. We jump forward 15 years time to see an attractive young woman cutting a chunk of meat which she then cures outside. Who is this woman and why is she doing this? But before we find that out, let’s unnecessarily watch her take a bath.
Well that was fun, right? If you had guessed that this girl was Koko all grown up, you’d be 100% right, because even without her saying anything - and there is a good 15 or so minutes with no dialogue here - we know it’s her because she does her signature finger bite. I also told you it would be there earlier on in this review.
Koko is now a survivalist, and the movie moves into its survival phase. We now follow Koko as she travels around areas that for some reason she hasn’t investigated anytime over the last 15 years. She heads into homes and shops to find new clothes and rice. It’s the ultimate shopping day
But this day is a little different. While camping for the night in an open field, which confuses me because as a survivalist I would have thought you’d find a more secretive and secure place to spend the night, she comes across a disheveled man who hasn’t had a haircut or a shave in a few months. But he is plump and well fed.
Every guy’s dream comes true as Koko invites the stranger back to her house to stay. Firstly, he is excited to eat rice-balls and random meat, which Koko never explains what it is, and secondly his excitement continues as he watches her take a bath at night. But she’s not dumb, she knows he is watching.
For those of you wondering if you’re going to see more than just a dark shadow bathing, just hold onto your hat because the filmmaker has you covered at the end of the film, ok?
This guy doesn’t get the hint that he should leave. In fact, quite the opposite, he thinks Koko should be helping him to pump out babies to repopulate the world. But she’s not into that, and we find out why. A flashback to her teenage years shows that her father was killed by a gang of teen men who then used Koko as their own private sex slave.
When Koko’s house is visited by one of the members of the undead, she brutally and efficiently takes it down and then begins to prepare the body for eating. Yes, we find out that Koko has been eating zombie meat! Does this still make her a cannibal or not?
Another flashback provides more context that her and the original group of survivors were experimenting with zombie meat to see if they could eat it. This bit is kind of gross, but not as gross as the revelation that this man she took pity is in is a bit of a Negan style character who is well versed with eating people.
During yet another bathing session, he decides to approach Koko to have forced coitus. But she’s not a delicate little flower. She’s actually a brutal killer, and with her bow and arrow in tow, she takes him down efficiently and using his technique to keeping people alive to harvest their meat, she tries out the method on him!
Fade out, movie is over. Koko wins.
Where do we start with this film?
Well from a pure horror perspective, this is an interesting one. It’s not quite a full on zombie film although it could be classed as one. And the second half which focuses on the survival and revenge themes have the basic elements of The Walking Dead and I Spit On Your Grave combined together.
It’s actually very unusual for these low budget J-horror flicks to have nudity, and in such an abundance like this movie has, so that feels like a bit of a throwback to the 80s and 90s where nudity would be thrown into a movie for nothing more than titillation.
Pacing on this film is probably the biggest issue. There is a lot of set up in the first half of the movie, but the director has actually failed to provide the audience with a reason for everything to happen - it’s just happened and that’s it. If you’re comfortable with not knowing why the goo appears from the sky and how the goo is able to turn people into zombies, then this probably won’t bother you.
Also, if you need closure about Koko’s mother and the fate of other characters, you’re not going to get that either. You’re also probably going to question some of the survival elements, such as how she still has running water. At least the electricity thing is explained, but I think that with all the time she has on her hands, she could have created something a bit better than her one solar panel and car battery.
I also got a bit annoyed at the fact that Koko keeps biting her finger. I got it the first time that the older woman was her, I didn’t need the movie to keep reminding me, especially since we only see little Koko do it once! But having said that, I think Asuka Shibu does a great job, especially since most of the time she is solo on screen with no one else to interact with, which is always a bit tricky.
Was the film fun? Yes, I think it was, and I think it’s something that most people would enjoy if they were looking for something a bit different than the normal zombie film.
I’ll give this movie 3 ghosts out of 5.
Genre Horror Drama
Director Yoji Unno
Starring Asuka Shibu, Yoji Unmo, Tsubaki Ishihara
Original Title ディケイ・オブ・ザ・パーソン
Alternative Title Decay of the Person
Country of Origin Japan
Release Date 30 March 2023
