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Director: Tae-gyun Kim.

Writers: Kôji Matsumoto (manga), and Tetsuya Oishi (screenplay).

Cast: Dai Watanabe, Asami Mizukawa and Kôji Yamamoto.

Despite the misleading title and the film’s comic book origins, the only real problem with Higanjima, Escape from Vampire Island is that Japanese folklore does not have any real vampires to really call their own. There are vampire-like creatures, like the Kappa, said to lure its victims to a watery grave to feast upon their blood; but, it is a creature that's also revered than always feared. There is also an Ikiryoh, a spirit that can drain its victim of its energy. That said, the real life folklore do not deter from the enjoyment of this film. Vampires can freely move about the world and amalgamate into any culture where it is given a new name by the village it is raiding.

In this film, that is almost exactly what happened.

Director: Tae-gyun Kim. Review: Adam Wing. Having looked forward to and loathed Tae-gyun Kim’s effects laden martial arts oddity Volcano High, it’s fair to say that my expectations for his take on the vampire horror genre weren’t high. Higanjima - a live-action Japanese movie based on the best-selling Manga series by Koji Matsumoto - is coming to UK DVD and Blu-ray in October courtesy of Manga Entertainment. Billed as a horror movie, it’s probably best if you lower your expectations and take a different approach to viewing the film. I really want to call it horror comedy but it takes itself a little too seriously for that, in fact - to define a movie like this can prove a little troublesome. Pop-rock horror anyone? I think I just made up my own movie genre but still… Two years after his older brother, Atsushi (Dai Watanabe), goes missing under mysterious circumstances,...

Year: 2009

Directors: Tae-gyun Kim

Writers: Kôji Matsumoto / Tetsuya Ôishi

IMDb: link

Trailer: link

Review by: rochefort

Rating: 4 out of 10

On the island of Higanjima, populated almost entirely by vampires, hero Atsushi (Dai Watanabe) wages a daily war with the bloodsuckers, dispatching each with a gruesome bamboo battering ram. Back on the Japanese mainland, his brother Akira (Hideo Ishiguro) and his friends learn that his missing brother may yet still be alive, so they head to the island to bring him back, and are soon locked in sword-to-fang combat with the living dead.

Okay, so when I hear there's yet another vampire film out there, regardless of the fact that it's a Korean/Japanese co-production, it's still a bit difficult to get excited, even if the film in question features katana-weilding vampire slayers. Harkening back to the days of rampant genre-busting Honk Kong action movies, "Higanjima", adapted from the manga, is...

Oh hello! Manga, vampires, blood, swords… it's all here! Welcome to the trailer for Tae-gyun Kim's Island of Vampires (Higanjima), an adaptation of the Japanese manga of the same title which centers on Saki, a student who goes searching for her brother who has mysteriously disappeared. Her search leads her to a mysterious island called Higanjima which is home to a village populated by vampires.

The trailer sells this as a big, Hollywood style action spectacle (complete with rock music), which I'm not sure does the film any great favors but I do love me some vampires and these certainly look murderous. Not sure I'm really digging the caked on makeup but who am I to judge? I've seen more than my share of bad make-up jobs in good films so I'm willing to overlook this minor transgression for the awesomeness the rest of the trailer suggests.

What are...

You ever wonder if manga fans in Japan get as riled up as their comic book counterparts do here in the West? How many fans yell out ‘Baka’ [stupid] versus ‘Sugoi’ [cool]? Something to ponder… anyways-

Another day, another manga adaptation to announce. Today it is the horror manga Higanjima, ‘the manga is named after a fictional island where the brother of the main character (Akira Miyamoto) went missing two years ago. Miyamoto leads a search party of friends to the island and discovers that there are vampires and other creatures lurking on it.’

Volcano High director Tae-Gyun Kim is directing the film. It will mark his return to genre cinema since doing Vh. And Japanese scribe Tetsuya Oishi, responsible for the scripts for the Death Note films is handling the adaptation of the original text.

There has been no word on the cast but the project is targeted for a Summer 2009 release.