[MarsHottentot]

I fell asleep during The First, my review on The Next (from RYM):
Though stylish and innovative, Kamen Rider: THE NEXT is, unfortunately, a bit more ambitious than the material allows. The 2007 sequel to 2005's Kamen Rider: THE FIRST, it follows as a decidedly "adult" reboot (boobs and blood!) of the 1973 series Kamen Rider V3 (or attempts to, at least). The result is an uneasy mixture of superhero and J-Horror tropes that are so old they fail to really have much impact. In the original Kamen Rider series from 1971, horror had as even a part to play as the superheroics so this concept should work. It really doesn't.

The film follows renegade cyborg, Takeshi Hongo (Kamen Rider Ichigou) as he hides out in a small school masquerading as a (terrible) teacher, while the evil Shocker organization plots to use nanobots to turn everyone into Shocker cyborgs. His former partner, Ichi-monji Hayato (Kamen Rider Nigo), spends his time at host clubs, spending cash and making the ladies squeal - that is when his cybernetic implants aren't violently being rejected.

During a nanobot test run on a hot IT company, Shocker infects J-Pop idol "Chiharu" who leaves before they come and kidnap the few survivors. Thanks to the nanotech in her blood, she survives being thrown down some stairs by some jealous rival bitches and landing face first into a power main. Though she lives, she's hideously disfigured and, unable to cope, kills herself. Being that she's a bag of money, her understanding management dump her body in the sewer and have one of those rival bitches get plastic surgery and take her place. Music Biz!

Now, her hit single, "Platinum Smile" is killing everyone that hears it, Chiharu's Ringu-esque ghost has a serious Grudge with the living!

Oh, shit - this is a Kamen Rider movie, you might forget with all this generic J-Horror crap going down! Well, it turns out that the other survivors of the IT disaster are now Shocker Inhumanoids - Hopper Version 3 and Chainsaw Lizard, under the command of the equally colorful Scissors Jaguar. When Kamen Rider Ichigou (Hongo) investigates, they beat him half to death before Kamen Rider Nigo makes the save with some cool motorcycle karate.

When Hopper V3 realizes that Shocker have, in essence, killed his sister Chiharu, he switches allegiances and it's Three Machineskateers from then on.

As you can tell, this is essentially like two separate screenplays occupying the same movie. It's like director Ryuta Tazaki and screenwriter Toshiki Inoue, two long time legendary names in Tokusatsu just wanted to do something besides robot dudes kicking monsters into explosions, but really didn't know how to make the superhero / j-horror tropes gel. This isn't helped by the fact that the J-Horror ghost angle gets confused by a little ザ・ギニーピッグ マンホールの中の人魚 [Guinea Pig: Mermaid in the Manhole] body horror because - yeaaah, we're finally making a movie for adults - high five!! Seriously, within the plot, the ghost angle doesn't make sense to start with, throwing that in, while definitely creepy - just makes the questions fill your head so full they start running out of your nose. Ah, well...

Still, what works, works well; it's a "beautiful" movie; Kazunari Tanaka shoots everything through a black filter, making for an oppressive apocalyptic feel. I'd say the movie is worth watching just for the fight / stunts and weirdness of Chainsaw Lizard and Scissors Jaguar alone. Chain Liz is a horny, leather armored beauty ("You fill me with EKUSHATASHI!") who puts on a lizard shaped helmet and sprouts a chainsaw from her right arm. Scissors Jaguar, however, takes the cake - a dorky, short, rubber faced salary man decked out in barbarian fetish gear who puts on a cheap, rubber Jaguar mask (meta as fuck if you ever watch any of the regular Kamen Rider shows - the insinuation being that all of the cheapo monsters in the show are just genetically enhanced weirdos in cheapo fetish costumes!) whose two arms turn into the blades of a pair of scissors. His debut scene is amazing.

Had they integrated the two sides in a more organic manner (maybe made the Shocker freaks into Body Snatcher stalk monsters), this might not have come off so uneven. As a Kamen Rider movie, it pretty much fails any way you look at it.