The Gutter’s own Carol Borden watched the the action-comedy Ghost Killer (Japan, 2024) and has some thoughts!

In Kensuke Sonomura’s Ghost Killer a woman is haunted by the ghost of a murdered assassin trapped on Earth by his desire for revenge. Frequent Sonomura collaborator Akari Takaishi (Baby Assassin I-III) plays Fumika, a college student who is beset. She gets by as a waitress at a drastically understaffed restaurant. She has hopes of working in the entertainment industry or becoming an influencer, but the influencer she goes to for advice is a predatory douchebag. Her best friend has a manipulative and violent boyfriend. Ghost Killer is not exactly feminist,but it has a lot of sympathy for Fumika and the shittinesses she and her friend face, especially in a film about a woman and her ghost assassin friend. Fumika feels like a real person and her experience–while entertainingly unreal–feels grounded in real life. One day, Fumika finds a haunted shell casing housing containing  the grudge of a murdered hitman, Kudo (Masanori Mimoto). They discover that if they clasp hands, Kudo possesses Fumika. This turns out to be useful when fighting for survival–or punishing “shitty men”–is necessary. And while she is horrified by violence, Fumika decides to help Kudo take revenge so he can move on. Which is complicated for Fumika and Kudo, but great for the audience.

Ghost Killer has all the conventions of a hitman with a heart movie paired with comedic possession. Kudo is a gruff hitman who comes around to doing the right thing. If there isn’t much of a transition from cold-blooded killer Kudo to caring Kudo, well, these are conventions I enjoy. Spectrally, we see Kudo lurking around Fumika, but during most possession scenes, Takaishi plays both Fumika and Kudo. Takaishi does a good job, taking on both Kudo’s attitude and physicality and in presenting Fumika and Kudo arguing with each other in her body, a staple of comedic possession.

Takaishi handles a good chunk of the film’s fights, Masanori also appears as Kudo during these fights so we can appreciate his skills and his duels with other trained martial artists and stunt performers. And these moments provide an opportunity to show Kudo’s emotional investment in keeping Fumika alive. While there are a lot of influences evident in Ghost Killer‘s the fight scenes and action set pieces, there is a strong John Woo flavor–especially when Fumika, Kudo, and Kagehara enter the gang’s lair and begin a probably doomed confrontation with some balletic slow-motion.

I don’t think sharing any of these details spoils Ghost Killer for anyone looking to watch a martial arts / action movie about a woman and a ghost hitman. As always, the pleasure in such things is the particular ways the conventions are employed. And Ghost Killer is definitely a nice time.

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