Yakuza Apocalypse Doesn't Make Much Sense, But It's A Lot of Fun!

By Dave B.

​If you watch enough movies, you’ll eventually come across some that are truly unique. Yakuza Apocalypse (2015, currently on Hulu) is near the top of that list. A Yakuza boss, who is loved by the people of his town (and unbeknownst to most, is a vampire), is confronted and killed by a rival syndicate. Before expiring for good however, he passes along his powers to a trusted underling, Kagayama, who begins a quest for revenge against the syndicate and those within his own organization who betrayed the boss. Kagayama then inadvertently (at first) begins to spread vampirism around the town. My synopsis may sound a bit odd, but I assure you that these are the least odd events in the entire movie.

​For starters, it isn’t just vampirism that is being spread. It’s Yakuza vampirism. Meaning that the townspeople are becoming both vampires AND Yakuza. It’s a creative and funny addition to the vampire genre and it works better than I would’ve thought it could. There are several ideas that fall into the “really creative and works well” camp. However, there are a lot of others that fall into the “really creative, but I don’t understand it at all” camp. Not that Yakuza Vampire is bad…it’s just exponentially more over-the-top than most movies can successfully pull off. But the acting is decent, the director does a fantastic job, the action is entertaining, and it’s only 75 minutes long (which is about the maximum amount of time a human can interpret what they are seeing in this movie considering that it geometrically increases in insanity every five minutes). 

​I’m definitely recommending Yakuza Apocalypse, but I forewarn you that…it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Once you get beyond the overly on-the-nose metaphor of gangsters being vampires that feed on civilians, the movie gets strange to the point of incomprehensibility. So if you absolutely have to have your movies make complete sense, you should avoid this title. But if you’re interested in possibly being pleasantly surprised by something that you never thought you would like, Yakuza Apocalypse may be the movie for you.

Rating: 6/10