Editorials
‘Battle Royale’ at 25: Why This Classic Still Defines Modern Horror
A landmark date in Japanese film history is approaching: December 16th, 2025, marks the official 25th anniversary of the theatrical release of Battle Royale. Its director, Kinji Fukasaku, was a media luminary that lit up the 70s cinema landscape with both war and crime films. He gained notoriety chiefly for his shocking yakuza exploitation films, the Battles Without Honor or Humanity series. But it was his final completed film, Battle Royale, that would be his most popular, and one of his most powerful in terms of the messaging of his films.
Celebrating 25 Years of Battle Royale
Battle Royale is, despite its wild ultraviolence and well-earned accusations of being an exploitation film in spirit, an incredibly moving film. When seen through the lens of Fukasaku’s directorial history and our contemporary troubles, it’s a perennial story of a struggle between generations. Of the subterfuge traditional power structures use to justify horrific actions, and of the people who see through it and rise above it. It’s, in Fukasaku’s words, a “fable” about “the restoration of trust” in the hearts of those who resist manufactured despair.
Battle Royale is the culmination of decades of a director’s frustration being processed and put to film. That brutal past Fukasaku wrestled with is transmuted into a bizarrely poignant and punctuated fairy tale of hope. There’s an emotional outpouring by its final reel, ending in a line of thought that has made the film age like fine wine: it’s up to the youth now. And if you ask Kinji Fukasaku, the kids might not be alright now, but they still can be.
A Director in Dialogue With Nationalism
In his lifetime, Kinji Fukasaku saw war. He was effectively on the front lines due to his perilous job in a munitions factory in Japan when he was 15. He had to witness firsthand the deaths of his friends and move the bodies of lost coworkers, killed in bombing runs on the factory by Allied forces. All of this only to see Japan then lose the war in the most horrific and inhumane way possible with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The downward spiral the nation was sent into was visible to all, as a government focused on economic and material restoration left people to slip through the cracks. These images were indelibly etched into his mind, and then his art.
His musings on the senseless and wanton violence against the Japanese citizenry during World War II were reflected by a staunch anti-nationalist streak in his war films. Under the Flag of the Rising Sun is a film that ends on a note that is as frightening as it is contemplative, reminding us that the cost of war and human cruelty on a governmental level is as spiritual and moral as it is material. And the only ones who really pay that debt of blood and soul are its people, not its leaders, who decided the cost for them.
From Yakuza Cinema to Youth Violence Commentary
This trend would continue into his much more popular films, the aforementioned Battle Without series and its New Battle continuations. The immense levels of Verhoeven-esque violence and general cruelty of these films were a key feature, not a bug. Fukasaku’s presentation of violence would go on to define and be reinterpreted by Asian crime cinema at large after it. But the crassness of these films, against people from all walks of life, is more than meets the eye.
Fukasaku’s yakuza films have often been interpreted by film journalists and scholars like Will Robinson Sheff and David Hanley to be “harsh-lit exposés of postwar Japan’s demoralized spirit”, “[conveying] the chaotic nature of the period”. It’s in the title itself: they’re vignettes highlighting the transformation of humans into criminals as a borderline species metamorphosis. Notions of decency are discarded and minds eroded by baser, war-like mentalities. This would, of course go on to be a major source of the horror in Battle Royale, watching young people slip into this transformation, with the film’s primary antagonists having fully succumbed to it.
The Brutality of Battle Royale
Though he never fully left crime films behind, towards the end of his career Fukasaku would veer into period dramas, jidaigeki films highlighting Japan’s antiquity. But his final film was a curveball return to form, at least in terms of how brutal and overtly political it was.
The year 2000 would see his adaptation of the alternate history horror novel Battle Royale, by author Koushun Takami. The screenplay by Kenji’s son Kenta Fukasaku moves pieces and players around, but ultimately it retains the same plot and most of the same characters. The premise was simple, but dark: a fascist Japanese government has stagnated due to harsh recession and unemployment rates. Its solution to massive economic downturn is bloodsport involving its youngest citizens.
They pit a class of teenagers against each other in a death game involving explosive collars and random weapons, a game that can only have one winner. Isolated from civilization on an abandoned island, the personalities that defined their high school experience turn into deadly shades of their former selves. While a few students band together to escape, most are subsumed by the violence, with heartbreaking results.
Kinji’s Fearsome Magnum Opus
It was a subversive novel from the jump, one blackballed through awards snubs and publication problems due to its exceptional amount of violence. It was a perfect match for Fukasaku’s voice, a grit-filled mouth that spoke truth against unjust power structures and out of touch politicians.
And when Fukasaku’s adaptation came out, it was every bit as outlandish to the general public as the book. Casting actual teenagers and not pulling any punches with how grotesque the battle was drew ire from all around. The film was forced to bear an R-15+ rating, not just because of rating board Eirin’s judgement, but due to a spat with the legislative branch of Japan known as the National Diet. Politicians blamed the film directly for violent crime as fervor around the film rose. Fukasaku urging younger audiences to sneak into theatres to watch it definitely did not help quell the panic.
It’s largely agreed that the conflict between the artist and the government was the major impetus for the film becoming so popular, launching the notoriety of the movie to international audiences rapidly. But it always struck me as a disservice to how well made the film is, because at the end of the day, it’s hard to disagree with the notion that this is Fukasaku’s best film. Without the controversy, it would have always been a classic, just because of the rare form Fukasaku was in while directing it.
A Cast and Director Working in Unison
On a technical level, the film has incredibly tight editing and special effects that shouldn’t be ignored. There’s Kurosawa gold in these hills, replete with sprays of blood and squibs all over thanks to the variety of brutal ends our characters meet. But all these years later, it’s more difficult not to be stunned by how many runaway performances this film has that are just that good.
The crushing subdued emotion of Tatsuya Fujiwara’s performance as Shuya. The delightful evil of Chiaki Kuriyama’s yandere blueprint Chigusa (it’s obvious why this role got her the part of Gogo in Kill Bill). The sheer charismatic menace that is Masanobu Andô as Kiriyama! And of course, we have Takeshi Kitano in a truly legendary performance as former class teacher turned psychotic game host Kitano. Takeshi Kitano has never missed, and his perfectly dark humored performance and the confrontation it culminates in at the film’s climax is proof of that.
The Lighthouse Sequence and the Power of Fukasaku’s Direction
Not everyone is delivering phenomenal work; the film’s notoriously bloody lighthouse sequence is carried more by the gut punch of what happens there than by the cast’s acumen as young actors. But even then, these minor characters and their performers are strong. They demand your sympathy. Even the characters who die in comedically dark deaths demand a fraction of your sadness.
The directing of Kinji Fukasaku, and his son Kenta who wrote the screenplay as well as aided in directing the cast, is what makes the movie work so well. Even if its lighting wasn’t great, if its camera work wasn’t phenomenal, its effects more subdued, Battle Royale would still be a fantastic film because of the man behind the camera and the experiences he drew on to make such a strong film with such a strong voice.
A Perfect Social Satire That Still Works Today
Many years later, the concepts popularized by Battle Royale, including a whole subgenre of fiction and games with its namesake, are old hat. But none of the offspring pieces of media that rose from it are able to achieve the level of incredible social satire the original does.
Fukasaku never glorifies the evils of the battle royale for aesthetic points: the deaths here are bombastic, silly at points, but the way they die is never “cool”. There’s a quiet sadness, a pathetic nature that is just under the surface of the deaths here that reminds you these aren’t action movie heroes. They’re just kids. It’s horrifying still 25 years after the fact because the film never downplays that factor.
They’re subjected to senseless violence, and it’s a great mirror to the social violence levied against them. It’s an attempt to remedy problems they didn’t cause by making them pay a price they should never have had to pay. They’re left rudderless by a society that didn’t care about them as anything more than a scapegoat or an economic panacea. They’ve lost the trust of and trust in the adults in their life, a reflection of the aimlessness and fear that much of the younger generations still carry with them today.
A Timeless Fable of Hope
In my younger days, I had a very surface level appreciation of Battle Royale. One on par with most young viewers, watching for the sheer high impact ultraviolence the film became infamous for. It was the edge of it all that appealed, I suppose. But looking at it now with fresh, older eyes, the characters are evergreen in what they represent. Fukasaku often called the film a “fable” or a “fairy tale” about the next generation’s challenges, and its heroes do feel heroic in that sense; Shuya, Kawada, and Noriko, stand defiant against the tide of hopelessness in an iconic way. They’re the ones who resist the tyranny of the state, who bond together to regain the trust that is stripped from them by finding it in each other. They take back their dignity, and though it’s a slow climb back, one that might seem impossible, there is hope.
When trust is taken from you, you can choose to take it back and share it with those who do believe in you. When hope is taken back, no matter the circumstance, it can’t be stolen from you again. That timeless message, that hidden beauty of a film painted in such harsh brushstrokes, is the kind of special essence that makes Battle Royale a true classic. In bleak times, and worse political states, Battle Royale still stands as not just a fantastic film, but one that understands and sings of that inescapable and unkillable sense of hope.
The United States spent most of this year celebrating its 250th anniversary. There have been parades, fireworks, and endless reminders of what the nation wants us to think are its founding ideals. Yet anniversaries are as much about what we choose to remember as they are about what we choose to forget. There is another anniversary this year. Five years ago this month, Candyman was released. The fact that both that film and America are sharing an anniversary this year may have been an accident, but that makes it no less significant.
Released amid another national reckoning over race, Nia DaCosta’s film asks a question that every celebration of America ought to confront: Is it possible to commemorate this nation without fully reckoning with the violence woven into its history? More than a sequel to a horror classic, Candyman is a meditation on the ghosts that haunt America because it has never fully reckoned with the past that created them.
How the Original Candyman Confronted America’s Racial History
The original Candyman understood this. Released in 1992 and set in the almost post-apocalyptic urban decay that was Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Bernard Rose’s film arrived only months after the L.A. Race Riots, a moment when this country was coming to terms with the way the country’s relationship with Black folks was shaped by decades of segregation and racism.
Most audiences saw a supernatural slasher about a hook-handed killer summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror. But beneath the horror was a far more unsettling story. Candyman was about the lingering consequences of America’s racial history and the way white America has sometimes turned Black suffering into myth instead of confronting the systems that produced it.
The film’s true horror was never simply Candyman. It was the realization that monsters can be born from histories a nation refuses to face. That is exactly where the 2021 film expands the original’s vision.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman Turns One Ghost Into Many
Bernard Rose’s Candyman explored the legacy of a single act of racist terror. Nia DaCosta’s film argues that the tragedy wasn’t confined to Daniel Robitaille, the man who became the monster. The 2021 film posits that Candyman is not one man but many.
Daniel Robitaille was lynched for loving a white woman. Sherman Fields takes on the mantle of the supernatural slasher because he was beaten to death by police after being falsely accused of harming a child. Anthony McCoy ultimately becomes part of the same legend. Their stories span generations, but they are connected by a nation that repeatedly produces the same injustice under different names at different points in history. The genius of the sequel is that it transforms Candyman from an individual ghost into a symbol of America’s recurring racial violence.
Candyman Shows How History Repeats Itself
History, the film suggests, is not something that happened once. It is something that keeps happening. That is why Candyman is one of my favorite films to teach in my Film and Philosophy course.
Students walk into class expecting a horror movie. They leave wrestling with questions about history, memory, and justice. We spend little time talking about jump scares or gore. (Because, let’s be honest, there is not much of that in the film.) Instead, we ask why some histories become legends while others are forgotten, what societies owe their victims, and whether a nation can ever move forward without honestly confronting the violence that shaped it.
The Horror of Remembering What America Wants to Forget
A good horror film reveals what we fear. What makes Candyman great is how it reveals what we would rather not remember. That is what haunted me the first time I saw it, long after the credits had rolled.
Five years after its release, Candyman remains one of the most unsettling movies in recent years because the history it confronts is not safely behind us. The original film understood that America’s racial violence could not simply be buried, while the 2021 film showed how easily that violence can be reproduced across generations.
Its Unquestionable Legacy in Horror
As America celebrates 250 years, Candyman reminds us that commemorating the nation’s founding requires remembering all this country’s history, including the parts that make the celebration uncomfortable.
We cannot exorcise a ghost by refusing to acknowledge why it exists. Perhaps that is the film’s most important lesson. The past does not haunt us because we remember it. It haunts us because we don’t.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
