This movie doesn't show you darkness, it makes you complicit in it. A child's survival instinct becomes the thing that destroys him, one compromise at a time, and the film refuses to let you feel good about any of it. By the end you're not watching a war story; you're watching what hunger does to a human being when there's nothing left to eat but each other.
A boy claws his way through a collapsing world, willing to cross any line to keep breathing. In fifteenth century Kyoto, in an era of warfare, turmoil and famine, a child is born beside a ruined shrine to a deranged mother who teaches him to live on human flesh. Left alone as an infant after she tries to devour him, he grows into a small, feral killer called Asura. His path changes when he meets Wakasa, a village girl who cares for him, shows him how to talk and tries to lead him away from savagery. As sickness and hunger close in on her village, the beast inside him resurfaces, but he still recalls a Buddhist monk and the purifying sutra he once learned. Adapted from George Akiyama's manga, the film is a bleak mix of action, drama and horror.
