Rating: D
Dir: Michael Thordarson
Star: Jeremy Tinaco, Olga Molina, Mirabel Miscala, Boynton Paek
Having reviewed Thordarson’s previous film in detail, I wondered if my review copy of this had got lost in the e-mail. But considering I gave Sophie and the Serial Killers a thorough critical kicking, I understand why he didn’t inform me about it. The Tubi algorithm, fortunately, had other ideas, so here we are. I can report there are a couple of big improvements. Firstly, this is close to half an hour shorter than Sophie. Oh, it still runs over 140 minutes and is about twice as long as necessary. But: progress! Second, it’s not a musical. There are still songs, and their lyrics remain terrible. Example:
Waifus, Waifus, Waifus
Two dimensional and magical
Waifus, Waifus, Waifus
They make 3-D girls so tragical
Yeah. But again, less is more. Progress!
However, concept and execution? Let’s begin with the former. Here’s the official synopsis. “Nathan is really into dating Yua Niijima, who is a Magical girl anime character body pillow… Nathan starts to date a real girl named Luna, a horror game enthusiast. The body pillow becomes jealous of Luna and comes to life to make sure no one steals her man away from her.” Quite a lot to unpack here. Yes, in case you skipped over it, Nathan (Tinaco) is dating a pillow. Let me repeat: DATING A PILLOW. Literally. He goes out in public with it. That Nathan is the film’s hero, says a lot. Because this is not a person who needs acceptance. Nathan is mentally ill and needs treatment. I’d start with shock therapy and work up to a lobotomy, but I am not a doctor.
I am, however, someone who spent over a decade in anime fandom. These people exist, and weaboos are part of the reason I am no longer active in anime fandom. [Though it’s mostly because anime went a bit shit after 2000] They deserve derision, to be ostracized and mocked out of existence. Here, though, Nathan’s family are far more chill than I would be. Except his mother, and she’s a relapsing alkie. Can’t say I blame her. A son like Nathan would drive me to drink heavily too. His sister, Tiffani, is unimpressed. But when it comes to kid brothers, sisters usually are [Source: have a sister]. So if you want Exhibit A for the fall of Western civilization, destroyed from within by the rot of “tolerance”, this family would be it.
Then, this family is weird generally, with the parents looking only about five years older than their kids. I’d be hard-pushed to say I recognize anyone in this film as a “real” person. Luna (Molina) seems more like weeb wish-fulfillment than anything, as evidenced by her placid reaction on discovering she is the replacement for a pillow. Nathan’s best friend Kat (Miscala) might be the one who could pass for normal: liking anime, yet not obsessing over it. You will have a lot of time to chew over these questions, because of Thordarson’s glacial sense of pacing. It’s over seventy minutes into this before Yua comes to life, and things only properly ramp up at around the [heavy sigh] two-hour mark.
At least in Sophie, you did have stuff happening, with a big enough cast to be killed off. It may not have been interesting or well-executed stuff. But it was there. Here, things drag painfully, due to a plethora of scenes that add effectively nothing. I’m thinking of Jordan-Kane Lewis, ruthlessly cutting his films to an hour or less. Thordarson should hire Lewis as an editor, as well as stop thinking he’s the next Stephen Sondheim. Then we’d be getting somewhere. But the biggest problem might be when Yua comes to life. I was expecting full-on cosplay, and we do get that eventually. But initially, she is depicted – and I wish I were kidding – by someone just wearing a pillow-case on their head. Know how stupid that sounds? It’s worse. See below.
What’s weird is, there are elements down the stretch which the film gets right. The cosplay Yua is perfectly fine, and could have been an amusing M3GAN knock-off if played that way. She just shows up ninety minutes too late, as do interesting little touches, like her victims turning into body pillows. The ending is surprisingly bleak, and if too sequel-pointing, things did not finish in the way I expected. The mix of animation and live-action is ambitious, yet given a budget listed in the IMDb as $25,000, it’s decently done. There is actually twenty or so minutes of genuinely… Well, I hesitate to use the word “good” in regard to the material, but I was entertained, more than I expected.
To be clear, this does not negate, or even balance, the litany of poor artistic choices and superfluous hour (or more), which got us to that point. Admittedly, seeking sense in a film about a pissed-off pillow may be a lost cause. However, internal logic is still necessary for horror, even when tongue is in cheek, as with Slotherhouse, Zombeavers or Cocaine Werewolf. It’s missing here, with too much stuff happening which is poorly explained, if at all. Yua’s transformation is the most obvious, yet definitely not the sole example. Why, for example, does Yua go after the employees of the storage facility? Or, indeed, just about everyone except Luna, who is obviously the biggest threat to her relationship with Nathan.
All told though, I think it is a little better than Sophie. This is a good thing, because if Thordarson was somehow getting worse as a writer, director and editor, with more experience, he’s definitely doing it wrong. Sophie was largely unsalvageable in the form it was released. Here, you are still looking at drastic changes – beginning with removing all traces of Pillowhead, ruthless editing to a ninety-minute maximum length, and retooling Nathan not to be irredeemable. Give the undeniably unique concept here a chance to breathe, embracing its own idiocy, and you might – just might – be onto something. I’ll be keeping an eye on Tubi for his next film, albeit probably against my better judgment…