JP Nunez
I don’t know much about the Kamen Rider franchise. Pretty much all I know is that it’s a long-running series that spans movies, TV, anime, and manga, and every iteration follows a different bug-themed superhero who rides a motorcycle and wears a mask (in fact, the Japanese word kamen means “mask”). But I’ve never seen or read any Kamen Rider, so I went into the new reboot Shin Kamen Rider pretty blind. I wanted to see it because it’s the fourth film in Hideaki Anno’s Shin Japan Heroes Universe, and I’m a big fan of everything I’ve seen from that universe so far. So, I figured I’d enjoy this film as well, and thankfully, I was right.
Shin Kamen Rider was written and directed by Hideaki Anno, and it stars Sosuke Ikematsu, Minami Hamabe, Takumi Saitoh, Yutaka Takenouchi, and Mirai Moriyama. In the movie, an evil organization named SHOCKER (which stands for Sustainable Happiness Organization with Computational Knowledge Embedded Remodeling) wants to take over the world, and it does so by creating human/animal hybrids called Augs and then brainwashing them to do its bidding. One of these Augs, a young man named Takeshi Hongo, is set free before SHOCKER can brainwash him, so he takes the name Kamen Rider and sets out to stop the evil organization and defeat the other Augs who are working for it.
Right from the opening scene, Shin Kamen Rider had me hooked. As a superhero movie, it relies heavily on its fun action scenes. In particular, they’re often quite bloody, and I really appreciated that. Not only does the horror fan in me enjoy bloody action, but I also thought the blood gave the film’s fight scenes a sense of realism that’s often lacking in this genre.
See, in most superhero movies, when a superhero or supervillain hits a normal human being, the person just gets thrown back, but they seem pretty unscathed otherwise. And even though I love the genre, that’s always slightly bothered me. If superheroes actually existed, their strikes would kill non-superpowered people, and thankfully, Shin Kamen Rider understands that.
Every time Kamen Rider hits a normal human being, their blood splatters pretty freely, leaving no chance they survive. There are even a few times when Kamen Rider hits them so hard that their heads cave in. To be fair, the film doesn’t linger over those shots the way a horror flick might, so it probably won’t satisfy the hardcore gorehounds among us. But if you want your superhero action to be a bit bloodier and more realistic than usual, Shin Kamen Rider is exactly what you’re looking for.
That being said, don’t go into this movie expecting all action all the time. Just like Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman (I haven’t seen the other film in this universe, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time), there are also a lot of quiet, dialogue- and character-driven scenes, and they’re pretty good too. The main characters are all likable and fun to watch, and after a little while, I even became quite attached to them.
However, there is one thing missing from Shin Kamen Rider that both Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman did tremendously well. Those movies had great stories on top of their great action, but this one isn’t nearly up to par in that regard. It’s just a generic superhero plot, and in an era when the genre has evolved far beyond that, it’s a pretty big letdown. I was hoping for a lot more. Instead, I got the same story I’d seen multiple times before.
Sure, the film has a few unexpected twists and turns, but they’re not terribly surprising. On the whole, it’s precisely what you’d expect from this kind of movie, so by the time it gets to the second act, it begins to drag a little. Thankfully, the third act has a really cool plot development (but don’t worry, I won’t spoil it!) that redeems the story quite a bit, but it doesn’t entirely outweigh everything that came before it.
Finally, I want to talk a bit about the Augs in this film. Since they’re human/animal hybrids, most of them feel more like monsters than regular supervillains. For example, one is a spider hybrid who can grow extra arms, and another is a bat hybrid who looks a lot like the vampire in Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass.
Even Kamen Rider himself is a bit monstrous. He can switch back and forth between his regular human form and his powered-up form, and when he’s in that powered-up mode, he looks like he could almost be a toned-down version of Frankenstein’s Monster. Those slightly monstrous characters give Shin Kamen Rider a cool horror-adjacent feel, so just like the bloody action, they also appealed to the horror fan in me.
At the end of the day, I can’t say that I loved Shin Kamen Rider the way I loved Shin Ultraman. The thin story just drags it down too much. But even with that caveat, I can still say that I had an enjoyable time with this movie. It’s a fun horror-adjacent superhero flick with likable characters, good action, and some cool monsters, so if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I recommend you check it out.
Shin Kamen Rider played at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 22, and it’s currently available to stream on Amazon Prime.
