Written by GHOST KILLER Movie Trailer
GHOST KILLER Review
by Anders Torbjorn
World of Martial Arts Television says:
Ghost Killer — When Hello Kitty Picks Up a Knife and Baby Assassins Teaches Her How to Use It
Ghost Killer is not the movie you expect— it’s a supernatural odd couple in a world of cute things that get soaked in ultraviolence. Deadpan humour brushes up against grief, and pastel vibes sit calmly beside blood on concrete. This is a Japanese film that feels like Hello Kitty wandered into the wrong neighborhood and somehow survived long enough to adapt. Not by losing her sweetness, but by sharpening it and getting revenge.
Showing around the UK Feb/ March 2026 with the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, ‘Experience Japan Through Cinema’
Think Baby Assassins energy—lo-fi hit jobs, awkward conversations, sudden eruptions of violence—filtered through an aesthetic that refuses to stop being cute even when things get very, very messy. Ghost Killer lives in that contradiction, and it thrives there.
At first glance, the premise sounds like it wants to be grim. A ghost with unfinished business latches onto the living to carry out revenge. Crime, corruption, death. All the usual suspects. But Ghost Killer doesn’t lean into dour seriousness. Instead, it sidesteps it with a shrug, a soft smile, and then—out of nowhere—a perfectly timed act of brutality.
That tonal whiplash? Completely intentional. Completely delightful.
Cute on the Outside, Crooked on the Inside
Visually, Ghost Killer plays a dangerous game. The color palette is bright. Interiors feel cozy. Characters wear outfits that wouldn’t look out of place in a slice-of-life anime. Even the city, despite its crime-ridden underbelly, often feels inviting—warm lighting, casual spaces, everyday routines.
And then someone gets hurt.
Badly.
The film understands something fundamental about modern Japanese genre cinema: contrast is comedy. Much like Baby Assassins, it treats violence as something that interrupts normal life rather than defines it. Characters aren’t constantly posing or brooding. They’re shopping. Eating convenience-store food. Having awkward small talk. When violence happens, it feels jarring precisely because it doesn’t announce itself.
Hello Kitty does scream before she stabs, she can’t do it. Then she just blinks and does it.
The Protagonist: Soft-Spoken, Hard Edges
Our lead character feels spiritually adjacent to the Baby Assassins duo—competent but emotionally undercooked, drifting through life with a vague sense of obligation rather than purpose. She’s not cool in a cinematic way. She’s cool in a “doesn’t realize how dangerous she is” way. Her demeanor stays gentle even as her actions grow more extreme.
She doesn’t monologue about morality. She doesn’t posture. She just… adapts.
The ghost that attaches himself to her is anything but cute. He’s bitter, sharp-tongued, and openly hostile to the idea of restraint. Where she hesitates, he pushes. Where she softens, he hardens. Their dynamic becomes the heart of the film—a strange buddy partnership where one half wants to keep things light and the other wants to burn the whole bar down.
It’s Baby Assassins’ deadpan interpersonal comedy, but filtered through a supernatural odd-couple lens.
Violence as Chore, Not Spectacle
One of the most Baby Assassins-coded elements of Ghost Killer is how violence is staged. Fights aren’t heroic crescendos. They’re tasks. Jobs that need doing. They arrive suddenly, resolve quickly, and leave behind messes nobody wants to clean up.
The choreography is grounded, efficient, and sometimes weirdly funny. A punch lands mid-sentence. A weapon comes out at an awkward angle. Someone slips—not slapstick, but human clumsiness. It’s violence without grandeur, which somehow makes it more unsettling and more amusing at the same time.
And yet, the film never trivialises pain. Injuries linger. Characters wince. The consequences stay. This isn’t cartoon violence—it’s cartoon aesthetics wrapped around very real damage. Hello Kitty may smile, but she still bleeds.
Humour That Whispers Instead of Winks
The comedy in Ghost Killer doesn’t mug for the camera. It’s quiet, observational, and often delivered with a straight face. Like Baby Assassins, it finds humour in social friction: uncomfortable pauses, mismatched expectations, people saying the wrong thing because they don’t know what the right thing is.
There’s a scene—seemingly trivial—where a violent plan is discussed with the same tone you’d use to decide what to eat for dinner. It’s not played as a joke. That’s why it works. The film trusts you to find the absurdity on your own.
Even the ghost gets in on this rhythm. His anger is constant, but the way it bounces off the protagonist’s mild reactions creates a dry, almost cosy tension. He wants vengeance. She wants things to not get too complicated. Neither fully wins.
A World Where Cuteness Is Armour
What makes the Hello Kitty comparison more than just aesthetic is how the film uses softness as a defence. Characters who appear harmless are routinely underestimated. Politeness becomes camouflage. Smiles become misdirection.
This is where Ghost Killer quietly says something sharp: in a violent world, appearing non-threatening can be a survival strategy. The film never spells this out. It just demonstrates it, again and again.
Criminals overlook the protagonist because she doesn’t look like a threat. Authority figures dismiss her. Even the ghost, at first, doubts her resolve. But capability reveals itself not through transformation, but accumulation. Small choices. Repeated exposure. The slow normalisation of danger.
She doesn’t become darker. The world just stops surprising her.
Emotion Without Melodrama
Despite its tonal playfulness, Ghost Killer takes grief seriously. The ghost’s rage is rooted in loss, and the film gives that loss space without milking it. There are no swelling strings or tear-soaked monologues. Instead, grief sits quietly in the background, shaping behaviour rather than dominating dialogue.
This restraint mirrors Baby Assassins’ approach to emotion—feelings are present, but rarely named. Characters don’t articulate their inner lives; they reveal them through habit. Through what they avoid. Through what they’re willing to do when pushed.
By the final act, the emotional stakes feel earned precisely because the film never begged you to feel them.
A Finale That Keeps Its Smile
When Ghost Killer reaches its conclusion, it doesn’t abandon its tonal balancing act. The climax is violent, yes—but still oddly gentle in presentation. The film refuses to tip fully into nihilism or triumph. Instead, it lands in that familiar Baby Assassins space: resolution without catharsis.
Things end. Problems are dealt with. But life doesn’t suddenly make sense.
The ghost’s role resolves in a way that’s satisfying without being sentimental. The protagonist doesn’t emerge transformed so much as… steadier. More aware of what she’s capable of, and what it costs.
The smile remains. It just means something different now.
Final Verdict
Ghost Killer is a charmingly dangerous film—a pastel-colored box full of knives. By blending Hello Kitty softness with Baby Assassins’ deadpan brutality, it creates a tone that’s playful without being frivolous and violent without being cruel.
This is a movie that understands that cuteness and darkness aren’t opposites. They’re roommates. And sometimes, they help each other survive.
It’s funny. It’s unsettling. It’s oddly sweet. And it leaves you with the sneaking suspicion that the most dangerous people aren’t the ones who look scary—
They’re the ones who smile, say sorry, and keep walking.
That’s the soul of this film.
SYNOPSIS
University student MATSUOKA Fumika (TAKAISHI Akari) drunkenly trips in the street after an unsuccessful date. Pulling herself up, she notices a bullet casing lying on the ground and picks it up. When she returns home, she is shocked to see the ghostly owner of the empty bullet, KUDO Hideo (MIMOTO Masanori), a legendary assassin who was recently murdered.
Terrified and in disbelief, Fumika discovers that by holding Hideo’s hand, she is granted lethal combat skills she never had. But Hideo has unfinished business — to find out who killed him — and only Fumika can help. Very reluctantly, she lends the hitman her body to investigate, but soon finds herself embroiled in a war between rival business factions and drawn into the orbit of KAGEHARA (KUROBA Mario), Hideo’s former protégé who harbours secrets of his own…
Directed by SONOMURA Kensuke, action director of the acclaimed Baby Assassins films, with a screenplay by their writer and director, SAKAMOTO Yugo, this thrilling and kinetic action film delivers sharp humour, high-octane martial arts, and a surprisingly heartfelt story of redemption and unlikely partnership.
Runs for 1 hour and 44 minutes.
Showing around the UK Feb/ March 2026 with the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, ‘Experience Japan Through Cinema’
Check the schedule here
Availability
Ghost Killer is available to Buy or Rent at home now
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