Product Description

Japanese pop stars Gackt and HYDE star in this wild hybrid of futuristic science fiction, John Woo-style gunplay, and Gothic vampire horror. MOON CHILD follows a group of childhood friends as they advance in a futuristic criminal underworld. Sho (Gackt) feels he is doomed to walk in his idol Kei's (HYDE) footsteps as a vampire with the gift of eternal life and the curse of blood thirst. Over time, their tight friendship becomes corrupted because of their rivalry and love for the same woman. Filmmaker Takahisa Zeze brings a stylized sting to the blood draining and hyper violent proceedings. Japanese with English subtitles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24064 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-05-18
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 119 minutes

Review
"Moon Child is more Asian bullet ballet than Nosferatu. Filled with sharp setpieces, Mexican standoffs and creative camera angles." --Horror Talk

Customer Reviews

Gackt and Hyde
It really helps if you're already a fan of these two guys. Both are muscians and fantastic ones at that. However some of their behavior and appearances (especially Gackt's) can be a little confusing to those not aware of their personalities. It's not neccessary to be a fan of theirs to enjoy this excellent movie, but it certainly helps.

The story is essentailly about friendship, betrayal, and redemption. It focuses on a group of orphans who've grown up together in the fictional country of Maleppa, an industrial inner-city wasteland made up of immigrants and the conflicts that arise from their co-habitation. Gackt and Hyde give surprisingly great perfomances as Sho and Kei. Surprising because it's easy to consider this a commercial exploitation of the musicians in order to cash in on their popularity. Of course, I don't speak Japanese so I couldn't really comment on their line delivery, however I belived the tears and the screams. The characters show great emotional pain and joy so that's what I'll judge the actors on.

"Moon Child" - A unique and melancholy story
I think that "Moon Child" is a very unique moive in many ways. It is not an ordinary vampire movie where the theme is more or less on the lust for the flesh. Yet, it is neither an action gun firing movie where the hero defeats vallain. In fact, many themes coexist in "Moon Child" - the struggle between love and hate, friendship and rivalry; the pain of growing up and growing apart; the choice of eternal life and unexpected death upon all human beings; and so many more.

I think that I should state here that I often review movies based on the feelings they gave me rather than the technical things such as plot and character development. Because, after all, we watch movies to search for feelings that are hard to find in reality, not to criticize how the story is written. "Moon Child" gave me a very different and somewhat melancholy feeling which doesn't usually exist in the happy Amiercan moives.

I didn't know too much about the cast before I watched the movie, except for Lee Hom Wong who took the role of Ah-Sun. I didn't know anything about Hyde and Gackt, which I think made me less biased in judging the movie. It wasn't until afterwards that I found out that Hyde and Gackt were actually professional singers in Japan. By the way, I think Hyde looks way much better than Gackt who often looks more like a woman than man.

Nonetheless, I think Hyde and Gackt's actings were great. Lee Hom Wong, on the other hand, wasn't as good as the rest of the cast, especially when he was speaking his lines in Chinese. I don't know if it was because the most of the cast were Japanese, or something else, but Lee Hom Wong seemed to have a lot of difficulty in fluently spitting out his lines in Chinese. There always seemed to be a little awkwardness in his accent and tone, which made his acting weird.

I strongly recommend this movie. It's worth watching.

More than expected -
I'm already a fan of Gackt's music, and so when I learned of Moon Child I wasn't expecting much more than for Gackt and HYDE to be eye candy (the same thing I thought of the Bujingai game). However, I was wrong.

First, don't listen to what the DVD cover describes. There's not much in the way of romance, period. Gackt and HYDE show more interest in each other at some points than in the female love interest. In fact, depending on your point of view, one could say that it's lacking on both sides of the spectrum.

There's lots of gunplay, but contrary to other reviews I've read, it's not exactly excessive. I did at one point think "jeez, do they ever run out of ammo?", but if you don't think too much about it, you won't have that problem. Some of the action scenes were very nicely executed and are even humourous.

As for the actual acting - HYDE could be a natural actor. The role he plays as the vampire Kei is extremely believable. You can empathize/sympathize with his inner turmoil. Gackt is also believable (not as much so..) as Sho. Sho's a complex character in the sense that his emotions fluctuate so quickly. One moment he's laughing, and the next he's very indignant.

If you're a fan of Gackt, HYDE or both, I highly recommend this. If you're a fan of neither, I still recommend it. You may be surprised to find yourself leaving the movie as a fan.