'Wonderful Paradise': House Party Transforms into WTF Free for All {Fantasia 2021: Feature Film Review}

Fantasia International Film Festival – I’m going to state this flat out: I hate moving. Packing up years of stuff and coming to the realization that I have way too many things in my life and that I’m a far bigger hoarder than I realize. I would venture a guess that I’m not the only one who feels this way.  With the never-ending packing of boxes, the constant filling up of garbage bags to take to Goodwill or the local dump, and most of all, the absolute boredom that fills the psyche in the goal to escape to someplace new.

Wonderful Paradise, a cinematic happening from Japan, takes this banal endeavor and turns it into an insane, no holds barred adventure into the world of what-the-fuckery that would rival any theater of filmic absurdity that pops into anyone’s brain pan.

Shuji (Seikô Itô), his son Yuta (Soran Tamoto), and his daughter Akane (Mayu Ozawa) are in the process of moving out of a very large house due to Shuji’s financial issues. While they are waiting for a moving van to take their essentials away, they are met by a homeless ‘monk’ Cho-San (Akira Emoto) who prays to an ‘American Buddha’ in front of the house and Shuji’s ex-wife and mother to his kids Akiko (Kaho Minami). Akane, annoyed with her father and bored about moving, tweets out an invitation to a house party at the soon to be vacated domicile. The party spreads fast throughout social media. It starts out as a small wedding party and as more guests arrive, it expands to include such events as an arrival of ancestral ghosts, a pop-up coffee shop complete with a coffee bean creature, a funeral with a bizarre dance sequence, and various other lurid wonders.

Co-written and directed by Masashi Yamamoto, this film plants a seed of a simple premise of  moving and,  by nurturing it with beautiful cinematography by Shintaro Teremoto, grows and flourishes into many scenes of mania within and without of a soon to be vacated homestead.  Wonderful Paradise is filled with fantasy, snappy black comedy, and many lurid sequences that you never see coming.  To provide any type of description for Wonderful Paradise would be a grand injustice.  This film must be experienced in order to provide some insights into its indescribable nature. 

The performances are terrific, complimenting the film’s well-drawn characters.  Seikô Itô is terrific as the dry, dead pan father Shuji.  Soran Yamamoto is spot on as the nerdy and annoying son Yuta, and Maya Owzawa is sublime as the disaffected, party scheming daughter Akane.  The scene-stealer every time we are graced with his presence is Akira Emoto as the extremely unpredictable and vastly entertaining homeless ‘holy man’ Cho-San.

While Wonderful Paradise has some elements of horror, this should not be classified as a horror film.  If, upon watching, exclamations such as, “What the hell?”, “Holy shit!”, and “What in the world am I watching?” emerge from your mouth, you’re on the right track.  This movie must be seen and, when you’ve finished watching it, question what you’ve recently witnessed.

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Author

Paul Grammatico was forbidden to see graphic films as a child and limited to edited TV movies, Paul received his horror information second hand through stories from older friends and siblings. He also vacationed in a desolate cottage, raised in houses with creepy basements, and lived in an apartment with a “full torso apparition”.Inspired by his experiences, Paul is a multi-award-winning screenwriter with an affinity of the weird and unexplained.