Directed by: Kensuke Sonomura Written by: Yugo Sakamoto Starring: Akari Takaishi – Fumika Matsuoka Masanori Mimoto – Hideo Kudo Mario Kuroba – Riku Kagehara Ayaka Higashino – Maho Iida Hidenobu Abera – Masaki Katayama Naoto Kuratomi – Narumi Satoshi Kibe – Katsushige Ryu Ichinose – Ryusuke Image Credit: Well Go USA Running Time: 105 minutes Not Rated Akari Takaishi is having a stellar year on the genre film festival circuit. The actress delivered the first of a one-two punch at Fantasia Fest as she reprised her role opposite Saori Izawa as young killers for hire in Yugo Sakamoto’s thoroughly enjoyable Baby Assassins Nice Days . It’s a trilogy that has showcased her talents at action and comedy, allowing both her and Izawa to carve out niches for themselves as up-and-coming fan favorites.
The second of those punches, Ghost Killer , allows Takaishi to show more range. Kensuke Sonomura’s supernatural action film, which screened at Fantastic Fest on Friday, casts her as a very different kind of character, but one where she’s still able to use those same talents in an engaging two-protagonist story of crime organizations, engaging characters, and rapid-fire action sequences. As the film opens, we find ourselves in an alleyway where a man (Mimoto) is fighting three knife-armed opponents.
He dispatches them all, but as he sits down to smoke an unseen shooter puts an end to him with a single bullet. The spent bullet shell makes its way by happenstance on the s.