Four years earlier, Ayana Hirasaka’s parents were crushed by Gamera in his fight against the gyoas. Now she lives with her uncaring aunt and uncle in a miserable little town filled with terrible teens. Within a temple, she finds, and binds with, a strange creature that is related to Gamera and the gyoas. It grows, and she sees it as her opportunity for revenge against Gamera. Elsewhere, the gyoas have returned, attacking all over the world, and Gamera’s attempts to stop them have racked up a far greater death toll than the flying lizards themselves. Elsewhere, Mayumi Nagamine is again studying the gyoas problem and trying to find a solution, and she brings back now ex-Inspector Osako and Asagi. Meanwhile, government policy is being influence by a cultist and a strange game designer.
Now this is how make a sequel. It isn’t just the same old monster battles, but an inversion of the first film. In Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, we saw a few negative side effects of a giant monster hero, but for the most part, it is clear that Gamera is great and cheerleading was the way to go. Not so here. This is about collateral damage (from monster fighting, yes, but also from any military or police activity). There are brutal and beautiful shots of Gamera mowing down thousands of people. He slips and shoots a fire ball into a coffee house. He focuses all his attention on burning a gyoas, an attack that fries everyone on the street for blocks. He stumbles into a building and it crashes down on those below. We saw the good in having a powerful weapon on our side; here’s the bad.
Everything is about side-effects. Osako was destroyed by the events of the previous two movies. He’s suffering from PTSD on the streets until Nagamine finds him. It is possible that Gamera is what has drawn the monsters to Japan, and all of the damage is what has allowed kooks access to the highest level of government. And then there is Ayanna, who is the anti-Asagi. Asagi has faith, which is easy to have when things have worked out. The cult-lady has faith too, and that doesn’t work out well. Ayana has pain and longs for revenge. When another kid tries to tell her that Gamera is her friend, I (and Ayanna) wanted to kick him in the shin.
Too bad Revenge of Iris can’t keep up that level of storytelling. For three-fourths of the runtime, only Godzilla ’54 was in its league. But the filmmakers didn’t know what to do with the ending. That’s not surprising as while this isn’t a kids film, it still wants to play a bit in the young adult world, so it doesn’t go as dark as it needed to. We get some deaths, but the film needed more, as well as a better wrap-up for the theme. This is a very good movie, that was reaching for greatness, and couldn’t hold on. But very good will do.