Ikenie Man — Ikenie Man (DVD)

Ikenie Man is a late 2010 Japanese slasher that leans more towards the manically paced & parody-focused side of the genre. The largely woodland set affair is full of self-referential dialogue/ set-ups, character cliché send-ups, and fairly light moments of splatter bound ‘n’ vein spurting gore.  Here from Wild Eye Releasing is a recent DVD release of the film.

Ikenie Man is from the year 2019, and was directed/written by Yu Nakamoto.  Since the late 2010's he racked up a fairly impressive five features- these take in action comedy Ichimonji Ken Prologue: Kung Fu Boy VS Murder Karate Ma(2018), movie geek-focused horror Phone of the Dead(2019), high school set action comedy horror Sensei! Kuchisake-onna Desu!(2023).

The film regards a group making a slasher film in the woods- their lead female actor gets fed and leaves the project. This sends the remaining cast & crew of three going wandering in the woods- coming across a group of seemingly cliched slasher victims- we have a chatting up the women jock, a tank-topped & glasses-wear geek, dark goth girl etc. But this group are not quite what they seem.

The film runs at a short ‘n’ shift/ just feature length of fifty-five minutes. And boy do the references to other films come thick & fast- be they visual or verbal. The film with-in film Slasher Killer looks like Jason on F13th two wearing a shack & dungarees,  we get an almost beat-by-beat recreation of  Texas Chain Saw dining table scene, and at one point a character straps a chainsaw to his hand stamp ala Evil Dead Two.

There’s no doubt the whole thing rushes by in a manic/ wacky manner- and a few of the moments of humour/ parody did hit with me. The issue for me was it took way too long to get to any decent/ prolonged gore scenes, and there was no real stalk-and-slash tension anywhere.  

This DVD is a bare-bones affair- with just two trailers on the disc. We do get through a reversible cover with original Japanese art on one side, and the English artwork on the other side.

Ikenie Man is going to appeal to those who enjoy the less serious/ send-up side of the slasher genre. But for me, there was way too much self-referential stuff, and too little decent gore/ tension here. I’d say give the trailer a playhere , and see if it’s for you.