Inspired by The Thing but shot in Japan, Bakemono won Best Feature at the Spooky Empire Horror Film Festival. At the Atlanta Horror Film Festival, it won Best Special Effects and at the Motor City Nightmares Film Festival, it also won Best Special Effects. At A Night of Horror Film Festival, it won Best Practical Effects. The movie has won many more awards at other festivals too including Best Genre Production at Japan Film Fest Hamburg, Best Beast at the Bay of Blood Film Festival in Canada, Best Foreign Origin Feature at the Bare Bones Film Festival, etc.
The writer/director/FX artist Doug Roos was recently on episode 629 of The Movie Crypt with Adam Green (Hatchet, Frozen, Digging Up the Marrow) and Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2, Everly, Mayhem, Suitable Flesh) to talk about the film, which was a dream come true for him as a long-time listener and fan. They both said very nice things about the movie with Adam Green describing it as “J-horror, not Americanized J-horror but J-horror meets Hellraiser” while Joe Lynch added “mixed with a Takashi Miike kinda feel or Tetsuo Iron Man or you know Enter the Void. Clearly he’s wearing his influences on his sleeve but made something that is wholly original and amazing practical effects like I was really blown away by some of the craft that went into this.”
You can get an exclusive crowdfunding-only Blu-ray of the film with more nudity and practical FX at the Kickstarter here and you can also get your name in the credits:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dougroos/japanese-horror-film-bakemono-no-cgi-monster-movie
Doug Roos has already shot his next feature in Tokyo, which will be going to film festivals soon. It’s another all practical FX monster movie but this time a bit of gritty sci-fi horror.