Rating: 1.5 Stars
The following review contains spoilers.
Overview:
The Guyver opens with a long text scroll about aliens coming to Earth and creating mankind and giving some of them hidden special powers, and these special people, dubbed Zoanoids, can turn into super monsters. Then for a long time, nothing happened. And now, in present day, the leader of the Zoanoids, the Zoalord, heads an evil company called Chronos. They are experimenting on a device called the Guyver, left behind by the aliens but of unknown function (but, assumed, limitless power). Then one day Dr. Tetsu Segawa has a crisis of conscience and flees with the Guyver, alerting CIA agent Max Reed to what Chronos is doing (hilariously Reed keeps explaining to people later that he was supposed to get some kind of alien power suit from Dr. Segawa, seemingly taken at face value), but before they can meet up, Dr. Segawa is murdered by some of the Zoanoids. However, prior to his murder, he hid the Guyver.
Meanwhile, inattentive aikido student and all-around white boy doofus Sean Barker is dating Dr. Segawa’s daughter, Mizuki. When she leaves the dojo with an unknown man (Max Reed), he follows them to the crime scene and stumbles upon the Guyver. On the way home he is of course mugged by a gang of toughs all wearing the same yellow bandana and he accidentally activates the Guyver, which becomes a suit of armor completely enveloping him, giving him the power to beat up his assailants. Apparently what all the scientists of Chronos couldn’t figure out is that you activate the Guyver by pushing on the big round thing that looks like a button.
The next day Sean goes to see Mizuki but stumbles upon her kidnapping by the Zoanoids, which is then immediately stumbled upon by Max Reed as well. A footchase leads us to an empty warehouse, where Sean activates the Guyver and there’s an old-fashioned rubber suit fight for a while, until Sean comes to believe he accidentally killed Mizuki (he did not, he just killed the Zoanoid holding her, and she got some blood on her). Distracted, the Zoanoids kick Sean’s ass, pull the Guyver out of his head, and Sean melts into a puddle and dies.
But wait! Back at Chronos, the Zoalord has decided to get all sex pest creepy on Mizuki while also telling her she has to show them how the Guyver works. Also, they’re turning Max Reed into a Zoanoid. Mizuki briefly gets the Guyver out of their hands, threatening to destroy it (somehow), when in the chaos one of the Zoanoids swallows it. Before you know it, the Guyver bursts out of his chest, and it’s Sean, and he’s alive, because once the Guyver bonds with you, I guess you’re immortal? Anyway, Sean beats up all the Zoanoids and kills the Zoalord, but not before Max Reed is transformed into a Zoanoid so hideous and absurd that he just has to lay down and die immediately, even though other Zoanoids can change back and forth to their human form at will. As Sean and Mizuki leave a flaming Chronos lab behind, we see that some of the government types Max Reed was working with have been in on this whole scheme all along. The end… or is it? No, it isn’t.
Best Parts:
The monster costumes and Guyver costume are all really well-done, especially for a movie that looks this basic and cheap otherwise. Most of them are just weird and gross, but it’s still fun to see them all, and they sure made a ton of them, probably way more than they needed for the story.
It’s nothing all that special, but at least the plot makes basic sense and you understand why people do the things they do.
Worst Parts:
Despite being a brisk 90-minutes of rubber monster fist fights, it’s quite boring. Except for the one scene with Max Reed turning into a really messed up monster and then dying, this is a body horror movie where no one ever seems all that horrified. Even when the normal people first encounter the Zoanoids, they mostly take it in stride.
Considering he’s our hero, there is no substance at all to Sean Barker. He’s just some guy who stumbles upon the Guyver by accident and then succeeds entirely due to its innate power. I get that he’s supposed to be an everyman, but he could literally be any man and it would make no difference. Even him being an aikido student seems superfluous as he’s shown to be quite bad at it, but as the Guyver he has way more fighting skill, suggesting it would be able to do that no matter who was inside the armor.
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