The Guard from Underground (1992)

Akiko Narushima (Makiko Kuno) just started her new job in the art acquisition department of the Akebono Corporation and things couldn’t be weirder. The department doesn’t exist according to her unfriendly coworkers and the management is no help at all. Mr. Kurume (Ren Osugi), the head of her department, is a pervert and Mr. Hyodo (Hatsunori Hasegawa), the president, couldn’t be any more apathetic about running the company. To make matters worse, Fujimaru (Yutaka Matsushige), the security guard and ex-sumo wrestler, has gone berserk and is murdering Akebono employees one by one. Now locked inside the building, Akiko, Hyodo, and a handful of survivors must find a way to escape before they too become human pretzels in Fujimaru’s hands.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse) writes and directs The Guard from Underground, an odd slasher potboiler with a pinch of comedy and a fistful of bizarreness tossed in. The film’s pace is quite deliberate; building the tension very slowly breaking only for dry humor and unexpected moments of extreme violence. Logic is not a strong point here and the plot does not hold up to very much scrutiny. The swirling score is quite odd and has a circus-like feel to it. Gore effects are mostly decent but some of the bone shattering moments look awkward and unrealistic. Luckily, the kill scenes here rely on brutality and not special effects wizardry.

Makiko Kuno plays Akiko, the heroine of the story, who senses something is wrong in the office building long before anyone else. Kuno is a pretty good actress (and maybe it’s a problem with the script) but it’s difficult to get much of an impression of her character in the film. The frighteningly talented Ren Osugi (MPD Psycho, Uzumaki) is very funny as the eccentric and perverted middle manager, Mr. Kurume. In his first film role, Yutaka Matsushige (Ringu, One Missed Call) makes for an imposing killer through menacing behavior and coolly delivered lines. Hatsunori Hasegawa (Gamera: Gaurdian of the Universe) plays Mr. Hyodo, the one person who seems thoroughly disinterested in running the company, quite well.

While The Guard from Underground may not make a great deal of sense and the pace isn’t exactly lightning fast, the film is moody and twisted enough to hold the attention of horror fans looking for something strange. Although nowhere near as violent or wild as something like Evil Dead Trap, it’s still interesting to see the Japanese take on the slasher formula with the seemingly unstoppable killer (Fujimaru) and the final girl (Akiko). The bleak and claustrophobic feel of the film is a sure sign of things to come from Kurosawa who later caused more than a few theater seat soilings with Pulse.