Review - Zombie Hunter Rika

All Rika wanted to do was cut school to visit her grandfather, whom she hadn’t seen, or heard from, in years. A funny thing happens when Rika and her friend arrive at grandpa’s town, though, they find it’s infested with zombies.

Here’s what you need to know about Zombie Hunter Rika. Rika loses her arm to a zombie bite, her grandfather, the master surgeon, gives her the arm of a famous zombie slayer, and suddenly it becomes Rika’s job to save the world from the zombie apocalypse. Why couldn’t grandpa had given her a regular person’s arm? Well, that would have made for a short, boring, movie, now wouldn’t it?

The production qualities of Zombie Hunter Rika are, at times, laugh out loud hilarious. The zombie hunter arm, once on Rika, is nothing more than a cheap rubber costume part that looks like it was found on sale at Party City. When she bends her arm you can even see the creases in it. The zombie makeup is slightly better than the rubber arm, but we’re still not talking The Walking Dead here.

It’s the camp nature of Zombie Hunter Rika that makes it so enjoyable, though. It’s clear they’re not taking themselves very seriously most of the time, and the rare times that they do are the only low points in the movie. I know, they didn’t want to make a purely camp zombie flick, but the dramatic change in personality one character has is so random, and happens so instantaneously, you just wish they’d have ignored character building altogether and gone straight to the zombie slaying.

When sitting down to watch a movie called Zombie Hunter Rika you probably already know what you’re getting into, and it ain’t Shakespeare. That being said, unless you’re proficient in Japanese you’ll need your reading glasses, because Rika is in Japanese with English subtitles. Zombie killing, however, is a universal language, and Zombie Hunter Rika is a fun, albeit oftentimes ridiculous, romp.

Enjoyability: 3.5 out of 5