The samurai (Takao Osawa) (r) and his mystery host the Aragami (Masaya Kato) (l) clash swordsĪragami starts out seeming like a giant shaggy dog story. There are other similarities to Versus – both films feature immortal warriors engaged in an enigmatic battle across the ages. Indeed, Aragami might hold some kind of record for the only action film to ever be shot using a single set. Aragami goes one step beyond this – it is an action film that is shot in a single room, the set for the interior of a temple. Versus, for instance, used only a single exterior setting – a forest – and no constructed sets.

Ryuhei Kitamura is not quite as out there as countrymen such as Takashi Miike or Shion Sono but likes to make his films in eccentric ways. He subsequently went onto other genre films such as Alice (2002), an interesting sf film about a psychological experiment conducted in a prison a segment of the horror anthology Jam Films (2002) Sky High (2003) about a woman who returns from the afterlife as a vengeful ghost Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) the English-language Clive Barker adaptation The Midnight Meat Train (2008) the animated science-fiction film Baton (2009), the English-language psycho film No One Lives (2012) a live-action adaptation of the manga Lupin III (2014) the English-language horror Downrange (2017) about a roadside sniper the Mashit episode of the horror anthology Nightmare Cinema (2018) and the non-genre action film The Doorman (2020), as well as produced Battlefield Baseball (2003) and Hellgate (2011). Kitamura burst onto screens with the blood-drenched Yakuza/zombie film Versus (2000). However, the Aragami is an undefeated master swordsman who is immortal and able to regenerate any wound and killing him proves more difficult than the samurai anticipated.Īragami was the third film from Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura. The samurai arms himself with various weapons. This makes the samurai decide to take the assignment of killing the Aragami. The Aragami also tells the samurai that he fed him the liver of his comrade in order to heal his wounds. The samurai is disbelieving but the Aragami continues, telling the samurai that he believes he is the one who is destined to kill him. The man then informs the samurai that he is the Aragami. The host tells the samurai that he should not go because the mountain is inhabited by a fearsome, bloodthirsty creature – a tengu called Aragami. The samurai is invited to drink with his host. He is welcomed and fed by the man who lives in the temple who also tells him that his comrade is dead. The samurai comes around two days later, healed.

A wounded samurai staggers into a mountain temple, carrying his injured comrade.

Aragami film