The running time suggested something cheap and straight-to-video, but it turned out to be one of my favourite zombie films. It's almost a post-zombie film. It'll annoy gorehounds, because it's slow, unthreatening and character-based.

This only lasts 15 minutes or so and we hardly see anything. Children are being evacuated. Ryouichi's mother tells him to go without her. (She's hiding in their apartment and her voice suggests bad things. She says her head hurts and that she'll follow him later. This is obviously a lie and we never see her.) Ryouichi's late for the minibus, but they let him aboard.

Also on the bus is a friend, Megumi, who asks him to kill her.

This is surprisingly heavyweight. It's focused on the emotions and the experience. The director knows how to put us in the moment and make us empathise with the characters, which of course makes us nervous. Ryouichi has no survival instincts at all, but what do you expect? He's a small child. We hardly meet any zombies, but we can see what's happening to the world (albeit through Ryouichi's eyes). Children on the other side of a fence throw stones at him.

Those early scenes feel COVID-dy to a viewer today, despite predating COVID by nearly a decade. The sterile white plague suits, the segregation, the face masks... and what follows could be called post-COVID if you were pessimistic about how we'd handle a global pandemic. Instead of being topical, this film was before its time. (Mind you, in fairness, there had been two major pandemics from new diseases even in the decade before this film was released: SARS and swine flu, aka. H1N1. A third viral outbreak, West Nile (WNV), was only an epidemic rather than a pandemic.)

It's ten years later. Something like that. There are still plenty of zombies, but the world's calmed down and become a lot more empty. The bloodbath is over. Zombies won't necessarily notice you. They might just go on collecting shoes, or cuddling what might be a baby, or cooperate to look for clothes. They might even respond to their name... unless they're just reacting to the sound of a human voice.

Occasionally, they can talk. One keeps saying "kill me" as it tries to strangle itself with wire. This reminds us of Megumi.

It's haunting to watch. You'll see people wrapped in plastic bags. Maybe they're zombies and maybe they're not, but it's definitely alarming to see one get unwrapped. Our hero has a twitching eye and occasional flashbacks from his childhood, when the world was bright and noisy. He's an undertaker, hunting down his clients' undead loved ones. They also have to specify what body part they want brought back as proof and/or for a funeral ceremony. He can't carry the whole cadaver, after all. (Given "kill me", it's possible that the clients who want someone laid to rest might actually be fulfilling their undead loved one's wishes.)

This is an understated film in a hypnotically quiet world, but it's not without action, danger and disgusting eye sockets that seep pus. There can be tension even in scenes where nothing happens. Our hero carries a spade-axe for decapitation. Ultimately, though, you're feeling sad for the zombies too. That annexe with the pram, cot, high chair and teddy bears, for instance. I don't understand the CGI butterflies, but perhaps they represent the concept of "mono no aware", i.e. empathy towards the impermanence and transience of things. (I disagree with grandad not wanting that photo back at the end, for instance, because he's not the only person who matters here, but I see his point of view.) There's almost no dialogue. In multiple ways, the protagonist is the opposite of a standard hero.

I liked this one a lot. It's classy, in its lonely way.