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SUMMARY

Misa Kuroi is a teenage witch, who investigates and deals with supernatural entities and evil warlocks.  Considered an urban legend by most people, her involvement usually results in lots of death and destruction.

Misa's uncle, a city coroner, calls in his young ward to investigate the body of girl who is being consumed by dimensional parasites.  A script found with the body leads Misa to a private girls school, where a strange play involving black magic is being enacted.

When Misa arrives, she meets a young girl named Aya.  She is shy, but has a warm heart.  The two of them become fast friends.

It's not long until something evil happens.  Now, Misa, her new friend, and the rest of the actors are trapped in a different dimension, with bloodthirsty zombies looking to sacrifice all of them to bring about the birth of the Homonculus.

This one may be the death of Misa, literally! 

DVD VISION TEST

VIDEO: The DVD is of moderate quality. There are pixels, wrinkles, and other digital garbage all over the place.  Even the Japanese video release looked better than this. 

AUDIO: Both the Japanese and English 2.0 audio are fine, but nothing to get excited about.  There is some surround sound, but not where you really need it, like when people being eaten and such. 

EDITS: The Japanese closing credits have been replaced with English credits.  No edits to the movie have been made.

EXTRAS: A very small picture gallery.

WIDESCREEN REVIEW

STORY: Based off of the "Occult/Horror manga" by Shinichi Koga, Misa the Dark Angel is a pretty typical entry into Japanese horror.  The screenplay by Kyoichi Nanatsuki and Sohtaro Hayshi goes right for the throat, as it were.  What characterization there is, winds up being used as a way to dispatch these teenaged girls in a hideous manner.  As any Freudian psychiatrists would say, "They have issues with women!"

ACTING: Never would I ever thought I would say this, but the English dub is pretty good.  They manage to convey the terrors just as well as the original actors.

The Japanese cast is pretty good, with the suitably creepy Hinako Saeki reprising her role from the TV series "Eko Eko Azarak".   The rest of the cast is pretty typical for a horror film.  All can scream very well. 

FAN SERVICE: Unlike the first movie with it's graphic nudity and sex, this one is pretty tame.  There are no girls in their panties, bras, or anything like that in this movie.

CONCLUSION

For Halloween one year, I rented the first movie in the Eko Eko Azarak series.  The movie was very suspenseful, with over the top gore, and gut wrenching scenes of death.  Forever hooked, I picked up the second movie, and the first volume of the TV series.  The second movie was okay, and the TV series had some interesting parts, but none matched the intensity of the first film.

Thanks to Media Blasters, we have the third movie in the series, Misa The Dark Angel.  This one is better than the second, but no where near as good as the first.  It's gory, but not overly so.  It's suspenseful, but not terrifying.  I pretty much knew how it was going to end, so I wasn't too surprised by the ending.

I'm not saying that this is a bad film.  It's entertaining, and will keep horror film fans satisfied. There are some decent attempts to add a level of style to a pretty straight forward shoot.  The characterization does help add a moderate level of depth to these young women.  However, the background winds up being wasted because they die soon after.

One thing I missed was the strong sexuality contained in the first one.   This one seemed sanitized for television.  Sure we can suggest that there is some sexual tension, but it's not to be seen.

As this was an early release for Tokyo Shock, I am inclined to cut them some slack for the so/so quality of the DVD.  With so much of this movie set in the dark or at night, you can see every single piece of digital crap.  Thank goodness the source was pretty grainy, or it would have looked really bad.  The fact that it has the dub version on one side and the subtitled version on the other side was also annoying.  That and the tiny picture gallery.

I also didn't like having the screen pushed up on the Japanese subtitled side.  It pretty much negated the "Special Widescreen Edition" moniker, and reminded me of the Mangarama process used by Central Park Media.

Misa the Dark Angel is a decent film for horror film buffs, or fans of Japanese occult horror.  However, with the technical issues, this may be one to think about.

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