Takashi Miike is one of my favorite directors.  His body of work is varied, both in genre and quality; I can always rest assured that, even though the movie I’m watching might be ultra-low budget, or badly-written, or even illogical, Miike is going to show me things I’ve never seen before, and in a very interesting way.  The same guy who directed Audition directed The Happiness Of The Katakuris and directed Ichi The Killer and directed 13 Assassins. There’s no thematic through line to his movies. Each one is a crazy, beautiful world unto itself.

When I saw a seven-foot humanoid cockroach wielding a club on the surface of Mars, I knew I was in for a wild ride.

Terra Formars (yeah, yeah, that’s how it’s spelled), based on the manga by Yû Sasuga tells a crazy story of the year 2597, when the world is overcrowded and resources are being depleted and Tokyo looks suspiciously like Blade Runner (complete with flying cars with rounded edges). In order to make Mars a livable planet, cockroaches and moss (wha…?) were sent there to provide oxygen and food, but the space radiation and the extremely cold temperatures boosted the evolution of the cockroaches, and now these professional-wrestler-sized insects are in need of wiping out (please don’t think too hard about any of this, there’s even more lunacy on the horizon).

Hideaki Ito and Emi Takei play a couple of unfortunates headed to prison (for what? Hmmm…) who are offered zero jail time and a large payday if they will join this little exterminating mission.  Each member of the crew has been infected with a different insect’s DNA that, after a trigger injection, will morph the person into a half human/half insect mutant with fighting abilities that reflect the insect that…seriously, don’t worry about it. You get to watch insectmen (and insectwomen) kick the crap out of giant man-roaches for about a hundred minutes.  Check your brain at the door.

Even though there is a lot that’s derivative of other, better movies (Blade Runner sets, Star Wars stormtrooper costumes, a plot that echoes both Alien and Starship Troopers), there is a lot to like here. If you were a fan of Ultraman as a kid (or as an adult, I don’t discriminate), you might also like this. It’s like a Japanese sci-fi monster show where everybody stays human size.  Sure, some of the CGI is wonky, and the green screen use is obvious, but the sight of characters sprouting antennae and spikes and large claws with which to do battle brought a smile to this tired old monster’s face.

There is a little too much expositional pipe being laid in some scenes, which made my itchy trigger finger hover over the fast-forward button a few times, but I sucked it up so that I wouldn’t miss any beheadings or cockroaches torn asunder in a spray of milky guts.

The characters are all stereotypes: the hunky bad boy, the evil boss with trendy hair (hello, Zorg from The Fifth Element), the uptight rules-follower, the pretty but tough girl–they all have their moment, and, even though nothing’s really surprising about any of it, it’s still a fun goofy flick and a decent way to spend a weekend afternoon. Uncle Mike sez check it out.