Yellow Dragons Village is a strange little Japanese film that starts out one way and ends up completely different, which can sometimes work for a movie, but sadly that's not the case here. In fact, the movie tried to be way too many things at once, resulting in a lot of confusion and quite a few unintentionally funny scenes.

The movie starts out like a typical found footage, as we see through the lens of a vertical camera phone and witness a group of college-aged friends act a fool among themselves. They document their escapades, including their road trip outside the city, only to find themselves with a broken-down car and forced to walk the rest of the way.

This naturally leads them to a secluded village in the middle of a forest, where they’re greeted by some seemingly friendly townsfolk. The locals are more than happy to fix up their car, but not until the next day, resulting in the group having to spend the night (that’s not sketchy at all).

As expected, the following day reveals the townspeople’s true intentions, leading the friends to fend for their lives and attempt to escape the village, because as it turns out the villagers are ritualistic cannibals (what a surprise!).

Since the movie is just a bit more than an hour long, they waste no time getting to the point, which is one positive thing I can say about the film. Also, while it starts out as found footage, that’s luckily dropped by the time they reach the village (around 6-minutes in), so the rest of the pic is filmed traditionally, which is a relief because I don’t think I could stomach any more of that vertical filming.

While the first half of the movie is your standard and predictable outsider's vs local's tale, the other half takes things to a whole other level and it becomes a full-blown action-martial arts film. This full tonal shift caught me off guard and I couldn’t help but laugh at what was going on. I don’t know if the change was to be taken seriously or not, but I was laughing regardless. Not only was it ridiculous to witness, but it was also cringey to watch some of the awkward fighting and cheesy dialogue between all these people who are doing it completely straight-faced.

Though, I’ll give the movie points for at least trying to mesh different genres together, even if it didn’t quite work as they intended it. I will also say that I was never bored by the events on screen, especially when it became an action film and the movie knew exactly when to end, which is why it’s so short. I might’ve liked this a little more had I known exactly what I was getting into, but as it is, the flick just tries to be too many things and it all comes out weird and unintentionally funny.

This film screened as part of Fantaspoa 2022. For more information on the festival, please visit www.fantaspoa.com.