Critics reviews

Japanese director Takashi Miike specializes in weird movies, but this is one of his weirdest, where the macabre meets the zany... It's all in the service of creating a uniquely unsettling mood in the viewer. You walk out of this film not on a cloud but on edge.

No doubt any viewer unfamiliar with the minutiae of recent Japanese pop culture will miss many of the few hundred jokes, allusions and put-ons happening here. But there's plenty left over with which to whip up an infectious ramshackle energy, close to the buzz that merrily stoned cinephiles derive from the crazy cable-streamed humor of Eric Andre or Tim & Eric.

For mid-career Miike it's a terribly sweet movie, the outrageous sumo-pedophile joke notwithstanding. Anything goes — shot like an Eighties music video, the movie regularly spasms into arch genre modes (horror, romantic kitsch, Svankmajer-ish clay animation, TV variety show, etc.) to fit its characters' perspectives (or, sometimes, for no reason at all), and it's as laugh-out-loud funny as any Miike film has ever been.

Beneath its outrageous exterior, The Happiness Of The Katakuris is a sweet story about the triumphant power of familial togetherness and perseverance. Yet, any deeper meanings are truly beside the point, since even when taken at freaky face value, Miike's film is a gonzo blast.