Demon Haunted Film

Now that Netflix's DVD service is winding down, I'm looking for oddities that we haven't gotten around to. Like Ashura (2005).

It is set in old Edo. Demons are infesting the city, with a beautiful demon named Bizan behind it, trying to become manifest. The demons are opposed by the demon hunting squad. Against this background, we have Ichikawa Somegoro VII, a real-life kabuki actor playing a kabuki actor. He used to hunt demons, but almost killed a young girl (who turned out to be a demon?) and quit. He meets up with an acrobat and thief, Rie Miyazawa, and they begin a relationship. But she has a strange mark or brand on her shoulder - the sign of Bizan.

This sounds pretty promising, but there were some problems. The main one is that it looked remarkably cheap. It may have been shot digitally with early equipment, or perhaps it was just poor decisions. The effects were very primitive, but even the sets and costumes looked cheap. 

This is a shame, because 1. The premise was promising and 2. There's some good stuff here. For one thing, Ichikawa doing kabuki was fun. You got to see his aragoto style close up - the fierce expressions, crossed eyes, etc. The acrobatic/thief troupe had a few good moments as well. 

Final comment: I admit we fell asleep for parts of this - maybe what we missed would have redeemed it. Or maybe we didn't have our mind in the right place. We've enjoyed plenty of cheap-looking productions, usually because they were outrageous enough to win us over. But this just didn't click.