HAIRY MONSTERS The yokai need a good stylist.

In Japan, a calf is born with a human head, moaning about an upcoming, horrifying war. Turns out, human-headed cow babies don’t lie. A demon has teamed with traitorous Yokai forest spirit Agi (Kuriyama) to kill off all the other Yokai, a variety pack of grotesque creatures like the one-eyed umbrella or the man with an inflatable head. Agi kidnaps them and drops them into a seething pit that unlocks their inner resentment and rage, converting them into rusty killer monsters. Young Tadashi (Kamiki) is the boy chosen to become the mythical Kirin Rider, brandishing a magical sword to stop the monsters from ransacking all of Japan, aided by a few brave Yokai.

This is the first time Miike, a master of absurd cinema, has tried his hand at a kids movie. The result is the type of creepy, low-fi, live-action fantasy that hasn’t been made since the ’80s (e.g., Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story). Though some computer graphics are employed, they rarely advance technologically beyond Atari’s heyday, and the dunderheaded Yokai draw their charm and humor from funny voices and outrageous costuming. So preposterously strange is this movie that it manages to be both incredibly new and nostalgic at the same time: You’ll remember seeing movies like this as a kid, but they were never this outré. Children may be a bit freaked by rubbernecked geishas and the like. It’s important that they understand you’re just as weirded out as they are.—Jonathan Messinger