My friend and I recently talked about films and experiencing tone whiplash. This is when the tone is well established and it suddenly changes so abruptly that it can be disorientating. Violence Voyager at the start is an enjoyable children’s adventure, that turns into a grotesque body horror story rivaling The Fly remake. Complete with the whole film being in a cute art style where every character is a paper cutout, the film does its best to lull you into a false sense of comfort. By the time the first horror beat appears out of nowhere, you are just awestruck from what you are seeing and experiencing.

The story as it goes follows the American boy Bobby and his friend Akkun on the last day of summer. They decide to brave the mountain that separates their village from the village of an old classmate regardless of the warnings that it is dangerous. On their way up the mountain they come across a run-down amusement attraction, the Violence Voyager, which is run by a kind older man who lets them in for free. While playing in the attraction, which is a humans vs aliens water gun game, they come across a girl who is barely conscious trying to find her boyfriend. As the tension begins to settle in for our young characters they soon realize they have made a huge mistake coming to this attraction.

As mentioned above what sets this film apart from others is a lovely art style and everything, characters and backgrounds, being made of paper cutouts. The art style is reminiscent of old GI Joe and Johnny Quest cartoons with a more Japanese flavor. Occasionally they will do a squirting water effect, smoke, or fire that is real that makes it feel like a children’s program. This childish art style causes the juxtaposition to the horror to be incredibly jarring, especially considering the horror is happening to children. Let this be the trigger warning for the review that grotesque and graphic things happen to the characters in this film, almost all of them being young children which can be very upsetting.

With the art style in place and the beginning music being childlike and fun it filled me with high expectations, unfortunately, while the art stayed great the music did not. From the get-go, the music was your standard simplistic children’s show music with occasional notes of a synth score creeping in. As the film went on however the music began to sound like temporary tracks and near the end there was barely any at all. The lack of music also began to make the poor English voice dubbing more apparent and impossible to ignore. These two factors make the film feel unfinished, which is very sad when all the art was clearly handled with care and detail.

Regardless of its shortcomings, Violence Voyager is a unique experience that couldn’t be further from a standard horror film if it tried. So much time and effort has clearly gone into the art and design and it shows in every scene with no two looking alike. If you or a friend have a love for disgusting body horror and Japanese art I couldn’t recommend this enough, but be prepared for children being harmed in incredibly unfortunate circumstances. For the best viewing experience possible I would highly recommend searching out a copy with the Japanese dialogue and watch it with the subtitles.