The Gesouidoz (London International Fantastic Film Festival 2024)

From its influence on pop culture to the music scenes popping up in every corner of the world, it’s frustrating as a signed-up fan of punk rock to be forever told that it is dead. For one, no music scene can truly die, and two, where is the rebellious spirit of those people who consistently make those claims? Two places that AWOL rebellious spirit won’t be found are London, for its brand-new International Fantastic Film Festival, and Japan, for the latest in a long line of punk movies dating back to the 1970s. In this case, it is the turn of The Gesouidoz from rising star director Kenichi Ugana—titled after the charming, noisy band at the center of this latest addition to Japan’s long history of punk rock cinema.

As the movie begins, we join the titular band in a barn as they are about to plan a new song for their final gig. At this point, the narrative rewinds a year to the bedroom of Hanako (Natsuko), which is covered in posters of classic rock and punk stars and buried under enough VHS tapes of horror movies to make any genre fan green with envy. The problem here is that she obsesses over the legends so much, she has convinced herself she will die on her 27th birthday—a fate that will effectively inaugurate her into the infamous “Club 27,” the club no one wants to be a part of. The issue is that the other members of that club are music legends, while Hanako and her band are stuck on the bottom rung of a local club scene.

We’ve all seen them—that local band that maybe gets one or two people at their gigs but still plugs away endlessly. Their music is a chaotic mess (not in the good way), with scattershot lyrics tangentially related to horror, atonally shouted alongside the music or literally screamed. And I don’t mean “screamed” in the musical style—I mean screamed like a girl in a horror movie being attacked by a masked killer. An acquired taste, then. A taste their manager has had enough of, as he gives them one final chance to make profitable music by signing them up for a job that will transport them to the countryside for a year to do manual, menial labor by day, giving them ample time to write new music.

The problem is they aren’t very good at pulling daikon out of the ground, as their day job demands. From there, The Gesouidoz becomes a hangout movie with pure countryside vibes and some memorable surrealist edges. Still, between their farming struggles and attempts to craft new music, they develop a sweet relationship with the elderly woman who facilitated the live-in opportunity. She thinks the music they create isn’t very good, but she loves the band’s spirit nonetheless—she is truly the one person any creative would love to have in their corner. And there’s something about this place that works for them—whether it’s their lovely boss or the Shiba dog they inherit (and rename John Cage). Eventually, they find that magical X-factor, transitioning from crusty, directionless hardcore punk to the horror-themed bubblegum punk we were on the cusp of hearing in the cold open.

How they get there, however, opens up the many core themes at the heart of Kenichi Ugana’s movie: from its neurodivergent musicians and how that affects their creative process to broader questions like—what does it mean to be punk? This all manifests into satisfying low-key surrealism, from the dog somehow speaking Japanese to phrases describing each instrument’s sound (“a musician doing a horror thing”), to Hanako literally vomiting a sentient cassette tape when a song is finished. The cassette tape, representing their first song, even picks a fight with their manager. These quirky touches are the notes by which The Gesouidoz lives or dies. Get on board with them, and the movie will worm its way deep into your affections. Fail, and it becomes yet another quirky Japanese comedy that struggles to overcome cultural and language differences.

Movies about the creation of art often face one problem: do we, the audience, believe in the final product? There have been countless titles where the creative process consumes the lives of its protagonists, only for the art produced to be, for lack of a better word, rubbish. It’s become almost a trope of “creative process” movies. Thankfully, The Gesouidoz joins a small list of punk movies with actually good music—alongside Adam Carter Rehmeier’s Dinner in America (2020), to name but one. The three or four songs they produce by the end are energetic and fun punk numbers, landing somewhere between the watermelon song from the aforementioned Dinner in America and the work supported by Damnably Records. Here’s a sentence that may lose many a reader, but their music reminded me of a harder version of Korean punks Drinking Boys and Girls Choir—albeit with more horror references.

As much as I enjoyed the mild countryside vibes and imaginative flourishes of The Gesouidoz, it isn’t without its issues. Unresolved narrative arcs, such as the lusty bassist with his fake afro or the guitarist addicted to countryside meat products, leave the band secondary to Hanako’s trials and tribulations. Her bandmates are mere cyphers for the music to travel through, which may be fortunate since their exaggerated reactions to creative breakthroughs—or shock at the quality of their accommodations—leave much to be desired. Giving the band more focus might have exposed these less favorable, campy excesses.

It’s also anticlimactic that the final gig takes place in front of four people in a barn. While this fits the awkwardness of a band that is (never confirmed but heavily implied to be) neurodivergent and uncomfortable with crowds, it feels like the movie misses out on a fan-pleasing ending where their brilliant songs are performed for an eager audience—à la the show-stopping finale of Linda Linda Linda (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2005). That said, it’s unfair to judge a film for not leaning into wish-fulfillment. Stripping away that expectation, what remains is an endlessly charming punk rock movie that may, in fact, all be taking place in Hanako’s mind. If that’s the case, it’s a fantasy well worth indulging.

Likewise, if it gets a decent release in the UK, it is crying out for an EP release; I’d hate this to be another Japanese punk rock movie, like Fish Story (Yoshihiro Nakamura, 2009), where the music dies with the credit roll. Stop teasing me, Japan.

Rob’s Archive – The Gesouidoz (2024)