Japanese director Takehide Hori spent seven years creating the magnum opus of stop-motion animation, but he isn’t done yet. Takehide’s passion project began in 2009 as a one-man team. He produced a short version of the film in 2013 and then finally collaborated with an incredibly small team; they produced an entire feature film in 2017 at 101 minutes of over 140,000 stop motion shots and plan to release two more movies in a trilogy. Even with the small team, the film’s credits are chock-full of Takehide Hori’s name. From voice acting to set design, writing, and directing, Takehide dedicated himself to creating a film from his mind.
The movie follows a nameless protagonist on a quest to recover fertility in humans. In a distant future, humans have almost perfected immortality but at the cost of fertility. The main character, “God,” a nickname gifted to him in the course of the film, descends into a seemingly never-ending otherworldly underground upon orders from his corporate job. The mission: to obtain a sample of a creature that lives underground in hopes of returning fertility to humans.
The creatures who live underground range in looks; humanoid creatures, death worms, mad scientists, and nightmarish dog-like creatures roam around the underworld. Completely disconnected from the human overworld, Takehide’s societal commentary isn’t lost on viewers. Takehide creates a language for the film; an amalgamation of Japanese, literal gibberish, and mumbling gives the communication a postmodern effect, the culmination of an evolving world.
The art direction of the film is like no movie ever made, live-action or animated. It’s unsettling and entirely intentional, the movie is incredibly unique, frequently breaking the commonplace “rules” of cinema. The watch becomes more and more dynamic as you attempt to dissect all the symbolism and the world put before you, all while trying to understand an incredibly well-crafted narrative journey.
Each character is drastically different and likely a reflection of some worldly idea you won’t understand until your second watch. Regardless of reading into the movie or simply putting something interesting on to watch, any viewer will be left awestruck, wanting more and asking a plethora of questions. The location is also ever-changing. Despite being a concrete, brutalist, subterranean maze, the sets and places within this world contain as much beauty as any other fantasy work.
While being wildly unsettling and sometimes scary and even gory there is an astounding cuteness that comes from the film. Likely from the baby-esque face given to the protagonist and his growth to understand those who live beneath him, now having been assimilated into their world. He’s very clearly lost and uncomfortable, and even more confused when intelligent humanoid life begins to treat him with respect, naming him God as a result of his descent into the underworld and these intelligent beings’ lives being attributed to humans.
Takehide Hori wants viewers to question the world they live in and the things they are taught and to choose their own beliefs. Junkhead is about a person reborn in a world he knows nothing of except for what people in higher positions have taught, said, and ordered. He has to eat his misconceptions and unlearn his prejudices. Through withstanding the trials and tribulations of underground living, “God” relearns humanity.
The film isn’t a conversation on the ethics of immortality or even a capitalist commentary despite containing. It is a film about understanding, growing, and learning to accept others. The discomfort forced on you in the beginning becomes comforting towards the end. We’ve been a part of the underworld for so long that when finally given the above ground again, it feels alien. Takehide Hori spent seven long years creating a masterful film, not for the glory or recognition (which he rightfully has received), but for the love of humanity.
