In addition to giving us lots of zombie action, 2016 also birthed several rather oddball movies. Many of them were Japanese films (not so much because the Japanese are quirky, but more because the contexts are different). And surprisingly, many of them worked out, fulfilling their purpose as entertainment and also arousing us (in terms of curiosity, come on guys, heads out of the gutter) with their premises.
I, for one, like oddball movies. So here I present to you the 5 quirkiest films of 2016. Of course some of them are R-21. Would you expect any less?
“Genius” was a biographical film that depicted a writer in a less than positive fashion. In fact, if you look at it critically, Wolfe could have very well been the villain of the piece. Also, for a story about writers, the plot kind of lost its way towards the end – but this was a biographical piece, so there was little leeway to change events to suit the traditional plot structure.
But it was beautiful. Unlike “Trumbo” or “Spotlight”, it showed us Wolfe in a decidedly romanticised yet authentic way. He was a selfish douchebag, no doubt about it. Yet his endless font of creativity was amazing to behold, even though his good intentions paved his way all the way to hell.
By definition, “Godzilla” movies are always quirky. It’s about a giant radioactive dinosaur that stomps across cities, and he sometimes fight equally enormous opponents that are just as ludicrous in concept as he is. That doesn’t stop the producers of “Godzilla” from taking it as seriously as they can and trying their best to make it as realistic as possible.
Which is what made “Shin: Godzilla” so fun to watch. Everyone takes it seriously in-story, but you can’t help but see the tongue-in-cheek attitudes of all the actors. Godzilla himself was great at the end, but he had huge, googly eyes that rattled around while he was evolving. Even for a mutated nuclear monster, massive eyes that have loose pupils are pushing the envelope in terms of weirdness.
3. HK Forbidden Super Hero: The Abnormal Crisis
“HK Forbidden Super Hero: The Abnormal Crisis” is the sequel to the wildly popular (it would have had to be wildly popular to garner a sequel right?) “HK Forbidden Super Hero”. It’s the story of a hero who gains power (and abs) by donning a pair of girl’s underwear (the… closer the girl, the more power he derives) and has to fight equally out-of-this-world villains. I’m surprised (but grateful) that it got past censors, but even during my secondary school days, I would not have envisioned something this perverted and strange.
Can’t beat it in terms of originality though.
“Anomalisa” was a film where the visuals were a critical part of the movie, in the sense that you couldn’t interchange it with generic animation and still have it work. It was also a sad tale of a rare disease, and the writer was probably an animator or had extensive animation experience to have envisioned it as such.
It was extremely weird. But it was also extremely good.
I literally squealed in delight when I first saw the news about “Sadako vs Kayako”. Seriously, we’re going to have a film where both monsters face off against each other? How contrived must the story be to have them meet? Is there even a story? Why would the other characters even be important in this movie?
It was everything you could ask for in a cheesy horror movie. And with two big names (and three monsters, remember that Kayako is the mother of Toshio in “Ju-On”) clashing on screen, it was the sort of thing that the stuff of legendary films like “Freddy vs. Jason” was made of.
The ending was the best part though. And it had a secret ending!
So which were the weirdest films you caught this year? Leave me a comment on your picks!
Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com. The views expressed are his own.
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I was thinking to watch Sadako vs Kayako 😀
Nice list! 🙂
Thank you!