Directed By: Shinsuke Sato

Starring: Yo Oizumi, Masami Nagasawa, Kasumi Asimura

A cowardly, down-on-his-luck manga artist must survive a zombie outbreak in this wonderfully gory tale from Japan.

Inevitably, I Am A Hero will always be compared to its stablemate ‘Train to Busan’, because both came out near the same time and deal with the sudden breakout of a mysterious zombie virus. But while Train to Busan is a heart-stopping tour filled with drama and suspense and moments of genuine terror, I Am A Hero is a little more fun, with over the top violence, a protagonist who is more of an awkward div than a badass, and a mood that flits impossibly between slapstick comedy and morose existentialism.

What the two films undoubtedly have in common, however, is a dedication to the ‘compelling undead’. The zombies here are amazing, with horrifying marionette movements, creepy dialogue and opposite-facing eyes that help keep the main threat of the movie feeling like a genuine danger rather than a meaningless plot device.

The first real zombie moment – when our hero peers through the letterbox of his estranged girlfriend Tekka’s apartment and witnesses her impressively flexible transformation – is a masterclass in modernising the zombie. She’s so desperate to have a munch on the meat of daft old Hideo-san that she contorts around the room like a ravenous pretzel, using her legs and arms in ways that would make Mia Malkova blush.

The main villain of the film (aside from the inevitably treacherous human survivors) is a particularly sprightly zombie athlete who leaps around the joint like a coked-up Mo Farah, and I actually found him to be pretty endearing as far as undead killing machines go.

Unlike western zombie tales, Japan as a culture has a distinct lack of guns, which makes Hideo’s lone firearm both a status symbol for the survivors to bicker over, as well as a devastatingly effective weapon in an armoury devoid of them. When it is used to dispatch a ghoul, it utterly fucking obliterates it, which is nice.

Despite a lacklustre climax that seems to drag on beyond the reasonable limits of human patience, and an interesting female character that initially seems to be the crux of the story before falling by-the-wayside without being fully capitalised on, I Am a Hero is still one of the more refreshing zombie movies of recent memory. Good, bloody stuff.