An apocalyptic samurai, ninja, sci-fi western fantasy with characters that wouldn't look out of place in 'Soul Calibur', 'Mortal Kombat' and various other Japanese RPG videogames, that is how I can best describe this eye popping flick, odd title though.The main star here is again the ultra cool Tak Sakaguchi, here in a kind of supernatural samurai mode as a mythic character who drags a coffin behind him everywhere he goes (and an odd little girl in your typical Japanese 'The Ring' spooky fashion) as he basically slaughters all who stand before him. His name is 'Grave' and he searches for the ultimate battle...rock on that!This film is pretty similar to 'Versus' in the location (a forest), it stars Tak as some kind of super hero again and the fact the story is really quite bizarre and makes no real sense, plus it appears to be in a place and time that don't exist. So basically Tak has nicked the coffin from a temple and is taking it to a spot in the forest so it can grant him anything he wants...it seems the coffin can do this. Or does it? a monk is also after Tak and the coffin to stop it being opened and releasing the Goddess of destruction who will kick start an apocalypse...that's not a good thing. The monk is aided by...wait for it...Steven Seagal Jr. yep that's right, or his real name Kentaro Seagal (sounds like a 'Mortal Kombat' character), all of them battle bandits and non human creatures to reach their respective goals.The film is fast and furious with fights breaking out all over the show and many of them being...well kinda average actually. Most seem too frantic and you can see the hits aren't making contact, also to be honest Tak isn't really a well built guy, he's cool but he doesn't really come across as tough and never really looks like he could really be whipping hordes of bad guys endlessly.The look of the film is really what sets this apart, all the costumes are a kind of cross between traditional Japanese period wear with 'Mad Max' 'Water World' 'Conan' 'Krull' and many other fantasy type films throw in, it all looks highly stylish. Add to this a complete 'Army of Darkness' approach to the dark humour, camera work, extreme supernatural entities and wickedly evil looking weapons which do also include a kind of samurai boomstick.Put it this way, the director of this film is Yuji Shimomura and he was the action director for 'Versus' (eh eh...you see, you see I came full circle there) and 'Devil May Cry 3' so I think you can get the gist of what I'm trying to explain here, the film is pretty much an explosive visual video game. Its probably better than 'Versus' in my personal view as I reeeally didn't follow that a tall, this is easier to follow plus it looks ace. I dunno why but the Japanese are just good at this kind of stuff, had this been a Hollywood flick with the usual overpaid names it would have been trash.7/10

When I read some of the other reviews for this film, I was quite excited to see this. It turns out this is probably the most abrupt about-face I've ever taken on a movie. My Beef with the crap-fest that is Death Trance:1. I love Asian movies but I hate Anime. The themes are always absurdly sensational and even downright kinky. This movie seems like it was written after an anime or maybe with a particular manga in mind. It has everything in common with anime from the extreme focus on visual appearance to the unreasonable number of static face shots. I'm looking down but up through my eyebrows while my head is tilted cockily to the side. Aren't I a bad*ss now?2. No. Despite the movie being listed under action, there is little or no real tangible action. Granted I'm a Jackie Chan fan so I"m used to seeing actual stunts and solid blows. Death Trance is full of action scenes where most of the time is spent in build up and aftermath. It's obvious how fake the fighting is. The "heroes" show minimal almost pitiful athleticism. Some parts of the fight don't even make it onto the screen when they pull stunts like "look at my face while I kill a guy" instead of "look at me kill a guy" and the classic "it was so fast even the audience couldn't see it" when the killing blow turns into a simple 2 frames; before and after.3. The main characters are simply obnoxious to look at. They are also completely unlikeable. On top of that they are almost never dynamic and never properly introduced. One of the characters has a heat seeking rocket launcher out of nowhere and we're supposed to think "How cool!" and not ask any questions like "who makes a point of carrying around a rocket launcher anyway? And in Old times magical Japan too, when everyone is using katanas still. Today a man with a rocket launcher is a terrorist or something. In the movie's setting though, it would make him Satan himself or something. This same character has God's Final Insult of a mullet. Hate it. The other hero has robes that part to show his inner upper thigh, hairless and smooth. If I'm gonna see man flesh I want it to be hairy and muscular like in 300 dammit. The third character seems to be a complete wuss in comparison because he doesn't fight, and the other 2 are eager to kill everyone in earshot of their meager "hiyaah!"s. I could not force myself to watch too far in, but judging by the first 20 minutes, the middle and end can't have been that great. Overall the highest quality went into the makeup and costumes and props. The acting was bad. The action was bad. The story was bad. Personally I'm not even into Gothic styles and all the black and white color themes grew very tiring. So even though the makeup and costumes were good, they were bad. For someone without my anti-anime bias and an open mind: 3 out of 10 Me: 1 out of 10 For those who cream themselves about anything and everything Japanese: 5 out of 10. Princess Blade and Versus were also bad but way better than this.

I think this movie was really great. First of all, unlike the previous comment, I love both Versus and Death Trance. Unlike him I realize Death Trance is NOT Versus 2, it is a completely different movie with its own plot, which I found highly interesting. Both are action movies and both contain unique plots, but in Death Trance there is not nearly as much gore. The thing that hooked me was the visuals of this movie. It is highly stylized. The costumes especially are amazing. And yes, there is also a ton of action but not much gore, which I guess if that is all you are looking for don't check this movie out.I really don't want to give anything away because I think it is definitely worth checking out. So if you like an interesting story line, some over-the-top action (minus ungodly amounts of blood), amazing visuals, an obscenely awesome soundtrack (it's all Dir en Grey-good stuff), and one hardcore actor (haha, what can I say, Tak Sakaguchi is bad ass) then you should probably get a hold of this film. enjoy ;)

Watching a lot of Asian action movies lately I saw the trailer for Death Trance and thought : Wow! Sowrds, motorbikes, guns, bazookas, Breakdance mixed with martial arts. But where was the story. Well, you don't often need a story in Good action flicks, but in this case : it was absolutely senseless. One fight after the other and you don't get why. And for being the ultimate fighter who only seeks destruction I didn't really understand why does Tak leave everybody alive??? The soundtrack really hurts. In movies like Versus and Azumi I felt the heavy rock music entertaining, but here you want to turn the sound off after short time before your ears start to bleed. If you are looking for a modern Japanese action movie go for Azumi, Shinobi, Aragami. But i wouldn't recommend this; except if you are a hardcore trash fan......