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Hiruko the Goblin looks dangerously like a one-trick-pony, but as far as Japanese horror-fantasy-comedies go, you can do a lot worse. An archaeologist has uncovered the existence of an ancient tomb, and summons a disgraced assistant who believes in goblins, to help him uncover the tomb’s secrets. In the process the explorer’s school-age son gets mixed up in the affair, watching his buddies lose their heads as people scramble to first verify the tomb’s existence and then make sure it’s all quickly forgotten. It’s a good bet that these occurrences won’t slip anyone’s mind very quickly, as they involve a number of students earning messy decapitations while fending off human-headed spider demons. There you go: the one trick that will lure you to this movie is the human-headed spider. It’s a great surreal image, too, but the Sewer is here to tell you that these are in no way spiders. That’s right, spiders have eight legs, and these creepy crawlies have only six. Did I ruin it for you? Oh well, you’re still going to want to enjoy this very pulpy amalgam of weirdness, just to see those ‘spiders’ (not to mention the pressure-wash geysers of blood when heads go flying.) Enjoy it you will, too, if you ignore the over-earnest humanistic messages and embrace the weirdness. Breakneck pacing in all the right places, gory deaths in all the strange places and human headed spiders with long tongues everywhere else should be enough to satisfy your sweat-tooth. Hiruko the Goblin keeps it light and weird for a fun Saturday afternoon respite that will once-and-for-all rid you of your human-headed spider jones.
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