The Killer Goldfish

Bluesky

“An angry goldfish is no more than a deadly weapon. Someone is using these goldfish to commit murders,” a detective warns.

This is Erika. She’s new, and not yet familiar with the extent of the strangeness routinely dealt with by First Investigative Division and their supporting units. Viewers may relate. Though the film’s Fantaspoa screening placed it in front of viewers more likely than most to be familiar with the work of Tsutsumi Yokihiko, that can only take a person so far – especially in this case, when he is consciously trying to break with his own prior approach to filmmaking, to create something so off the wall that it will change attitudes to and within Japanese cinema. This is probably his strangest film to date, its full-on, rapid fire style combining with a wild and not always coherent plot to exhaust most viewers in the first 15 minutes. If you last longer than that (which probably means you’re under six or using methamphetamines), you may start to put the pieces together, with the benefit of scraps of information not immediately available to Erika and her colleagues.

This scraps include the presence of a Neanderthal man on the streets of Tokyo; the mysterious disappearances of high school students around the country; more-unlikely-than-usual events taking place on a reality TV show; the emergence of a strange artefact which suggests that humans might have been present in Japan much earlier than thought; and an apparent psychic link between a teenage girl and the killer fish themselves. It’s suggested that the fish simply have vengeful genes, but then stories begin to emerge of other kinds of animals resenting being controlled by humans, to the extent that they’re willing to participate in suicide attacks. But who – or what – is radicalising them and sending them over the edge?

If you’re worried about animal cruelty in a film like this, don’t be. The worst it gets is a few insensitive jokes which are unlikely to upset the fish. They all look healthy and well cared for. Their acts of violence are conveyed through simple camera effects and the use of models. After decades in the business, Tsutsumi has great technique, and he’s no less committed than he might be to more serious subject matter. In many ways the film is highly polished, even if the frenetic editing distracts from this.

It’s not clear how well the film will travel. Aspects of it are quite culturally specific, from the psychic impact of the archaeological discovery to the nerdery about fish that drives part of the investigation. The buddy cop element is universal, however, and the silliness of the central idea (which goes way beyond murderous fish) is so considerable that those viewers who can get behind it probably won’t worry if other elements are obscure to them. This is, at any rate, not your average animal threat film. It is very much its own beast.

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