{"id":19033,"date":"2026-10-03T21:00:55","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T01:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=19033"},"modified":"2026-10-03T10:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T14:48:15","slug":"hiruko-the-goblin-1990-shinya-tsukamoto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/19033","title":{"rendered":"Hiruko the Goblin (1990, Shinya Tsukamoto)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After the relentless <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/13840\">Tetsuo<\/a><\/em> movies this one is going for an Obayashi contrast: demonic possession and rushing camera blur and bodily explosions amidst a medium-paced, brightly colored daytime plot with upbeat made-for-TV music.  A few good stop-motion and matte painting shots, then after the initial goblin attacks the movie has lost its juice, and they&#8217;re just spraying flying spiders with a can of wd-40.  Feels like a studio with a bland cursed-high-school story hired an edgy young filmmaker to helm, and each side brushed against each other&#8217;s limitations.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/hiruko3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>The goblin is hard to deal with, since people who see it tend to chop off their own heads.  Student Masao has an exploding growth on his back, a Tsukamoto specialty.  Disgraced Archaeologist Hieda (<a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/18573\">Yumeji<\/a> \/ Mr. Katakuri) shows up at a high school with homemade ghostbusting equipment, summoned by a professor who then got <em>Evil-Dead<\/em>ed by the goblin&#8217;s-eye camera.  Masao and Hieda and the school janitor (the non-bald doctor in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/17322\">Dogra Magra<\/a><\/em>) have to piece together the mythology and save the world from evil, I suppose.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/hiruko1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/hiruko2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the relentless Tetsuo movies this one is going for an Obayashi contrast: demonic possession and rushing camera blur and bodily explosions amidst a medium-paced, brightly colored daytime plot with upbeat made-for-TV music. A few good stop-motion and matte painting shots, then after the initial goblin attacks the movie has lost its juice, and they&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[451,2376,1420,36,641],"class_list":["post-19033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1990s","tag-archaeology","tag-demons","tag-japan","tag-shinya-tsukamoto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19095,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033\/revisions\/19095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}