Review: Matango

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

Matango is often dismissively described as a campy creature feature. Indeed, its basic premise—a group of vacationers stranded on a desert island encounter a hallucinogenic, radioactive mushroom that gradually transforms anyone that consumes it into a hideously grotesque mutant—makes it sound like the sort of trashy B-movie that Joel and the bots would mercilessly lampoon on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Beneath the surface-level absurdity of this broad-strokes synopsis, however, the film is thematically rich and immaculately structured—a pop sci-fi masterpiece that evokes The Day the Earth Stood Still and Attack of the Crab Monsters in equal measure.

In the capable hands of Ishiro Honda (who, of course, also co-created Godzilla), the narrative unfolds with elegant efficiency. Within the first ten minutes, the director manages to squeeze in a brief prologue, the opening credits, and introductions for every major character; by minute thirteen, our protagonists are already at each other’s throats, their previous camaraderie immediately evaporating the instant they’re threatened by a violent storm at sea. The conflict that emerges revolves, naturally, around class and status, with the college-educated, “elitist” passengers pitted against the comparatively blue-collar yacht crew. Trapped in an environment where hierarchies are irrelevant and confronted with challenges that cannot be overcome by rationality, intellectualism, or monetary wealth, our hapless heroes slowly but surely embrace the blissful narcotic haze promised by the sentient mushrooms, surrendering their flesh and psyches to the fungal hive mind in exchange for sustenance.

Even the sole survivor of the ordeal ultimately regrets escaping back to “civilization,” where—due to his infection and partial metamorphosis—he is reduced to a mere medical curiosity, researched and analyzed by scientists that might once have been his colleagues. It’s a bleak, haunting coda that is nevertheless perfectly consistent with the preceding social commentary. Sharply satirical and slyly subversive, Matango epitomizes my favorite flavor of genre deconstruction: an allegorical horror story in which man is the most terrifying monster of them all.