On what seems to be just a peaceful trip on a yacht, a group of people crash land on an island due to a storm, completely bereft of humankind.  Alone, with no way to get back or to make contact with anybody, they set out to discover what they can find until someone else may come across them on the island and hopefully rescue them.  The group soon discovers that their food stores are running low, and while there are mushrooms everywhere for as far as the eye can see, one of the group exclaims that they are poisonous and to avoid eating them at all cost.  Hunger can do mysterious things to people though and some of them start to cave, partaking of the mushrooms instead of the potatoes, eggs and birds that they are able to catch.  Stranger still, the people that have eaten the mushrooms start to transform into large, mutated mushroom-like men.  It becomes clear to those that remain that not everybody is going to make it out alive.

When a film takes place on an island of the deserted kind, you know automatically that bad things are going to happen to the cast and it is no different here with Matango.  On the Beach, The Lord of the Flies and even Castaway all feature bad things happening to those who happen to step foot on the shores of those lonely retreats.  One thing they all have in common as well are the dystopic natures they present, futures that are unsure for our heroes, outcomes that are not guaranteed and as such tend to be a little more bleak in nature.  While the latter two examples were more dramatic in nature, On the Beach and this film share the science-fiction and horror genre though they are about completely different things.  This film looks at their humanity and tests the strengths of our characters, about who they are and how far they can go before they snap.  It just so happens to also feature an external foe to make things just a little more interesting for them.  So not only are these people tested personally, but as a group too and should they fail at any level, it could mean not only their deaths, but everybody’s.

While the deaths of the characters seem imminent, whether it is from starvation, dehydration, violence or by mushroom men, it is funny to note how the area around them is quite beautiful.  Though they might be in a paradise, death comes in many forms and it makes the horror of this film stand out all the more because of it.  The camera-work is great and Ishirō Honda captures all the fighting and paranoia perfectly.  Hajime Koizumi provides some wonderful shots of the island as well as the gloomy shipwreck that our group of strangers find themselves forced to live upon to survive.  Even better still are the special effects as these Mushroom men are quite terrifying, as are the people who have been newly transformed or those that find themselves in the middle of that transformation.  This is one Toho movie where it looks like the budget was used effectively as the costumes were made really well and they look absolutely fantastic.  It could have been bad, Roger Corman bad, but thankfully it never happened that way and so this science-fiction chiller, when it hit that payoff, it did so in style.

Honda takes this tale and crafts a masterpiece of not only science-fiction and horror, but also human drama.  You feel for these people and while you would like to see them survive, it gets harder and harder to do so as their base emotions start to make themselves known.  Treachery, greed, betrayal, desire and all of those ‘deadly sins’ start to pour out of them as their bellies start to shrink.  They become desperate and as such, reckless and uncaring.  Soon what was once a joint effort to survive now becomes that of every man for himself.  Never mind that together you might stand a better chance of living, when the brain starts to suffer, so too does its actions and this cast of characters do a great job of bringing that across to the viewer.  Starring Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Hiroshi Koizumi, Kenji Sahara, Hiroshi Tachikawa, Yoshio Tsuchiya and Miki Yashiro, their descent into madness is captivating and the film would not have been the same without them.

Simply put, you must see this film.  If you are a fan of horror, science-fiction, the human condition, all of the above, or even just a guy who likes islands, this movie is for you.  It might get a little dreary, it might seem a little eerie, but when all is said and done, Matango is a beautiful movie and you will not have any regrets after having watched it.

4.5 out of 5