Dead Sushi (2012) Review

Dead Sushi (2012) Review

 

Do you love sushi? Well, the creators of Dead Sushi sure do. In fact, they really love it. Maybe a little too much. Allegedly inspired by the success of Piranha 3D in Japan and the evil food premise stemming from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Dead Sushi is a food-focused-horror-comedy unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

The movie takes place in a sushi hotel, and Keiko, the daughter of a famous sushi chef, wants to make her own way to raw fish fame. These people take their sushi super seriously. The acting is ultra-exaggerated, but hilarious and not annoying the way purposeful overacting can sometimes be. The story isn’t really important. What matters is a bunch of characters are introduced for the premise to be taken full advantage of. For the first half of the movie I thought it was more just comedy than comedy-horror. There’s not really any attempt to make anything scary, it’s just funny, but then some weird stuff happens that becomes horrific simply for how bizarre and uncomfortable it is. The sushi comes to life, and becomes violent, and deadly. It shouldn’t really have been called Dead Sushi, because the sushi is alive—well, it’s more like zombie sushi, and a piece of egg sushi becomes a protagonist while the other killer sushi are antagonists, so it could’ve been called Zombie Sushi, Killer Sushi, Night of the Living Sushi, or Egg vs. Sushi, but at least it has Sushi in the title, so they got that part right.

The filmmakers knew what they were doing and nailed the self-aware tone they were going for. Obviously the premise is ridiculous, but there’s lots of fun to be had with Dead Sushi. The effects are cheap but have some charm, and there are some inventive ideas beyond just pieces of sushi trying to kill people, such as Tuna Man, who you just have to see to believe. You can tell they cut down on the budget in one way by having flashbacks shown in still images, which is a little disappointing because there are moments in those flashbacks that would’ve been better had they been fully realized, but it was still funnier and better to have them done that way than to not have had them at all.

There are other strange aspects beyond just the concept, such as the soundtrack. It’s as if the music was done by four different people. Sometimes it slaps, sometimes it is heavy metal, sometimes it sounds like a porn soundtrack, and sometimes it’s like weird funhouse music. There is also quite a bit of action, with people Kung Fu fighting the sushi and each other, and it’s actually well done. It is also unusual in that everything is weirdly sexualized—and I mean literally everything. Like I said, these guys really liked sushi, but I think it also comes down to that Piranha 3D influence. Seeing scantily clad women being soaked in blood as little balls of rice and raw fish with sharp teeth gnaw on them is a sight that is sure to leave an impression.

Dead Sushi is up there as one of the most entertaining food-related-horror-comedies I’ve seen. For anyone familiar with this sub-genre, it’ll be entertaining, but if you aren’t as well versed in this kind of cheesy filmmaking, watching it might be a good indicator as to whether or not you’ll want to check out other movies of this type based on your enjoyment.