Matango

This is a good horror movie by any standard. The misty atmosphere is creepy to begin with and full of unseen menace, glimpses of the mushroom-people. The crew waste no time in turning on each other, which any horror fan knows makes one easy prey for monsters. The aspects of this movie are consistantly sinister and eery. Despite this, some things break the merits. The annoying "la la la LA la la" song is an auditory strain, as it makes its sudden reappearance in the ending credits, and the "twist ending" of the movie is somewhat predictable.

The thing I find most intriguing is the interaction of the monsters. They never truly bring harm, the worst is bodily carrying a girl away to another part of the island. The humans, not yet fully translated, but beginning the decent into madness, are the most malevolent menace. In particular the woman who was the second to eat mushrooms, with that superior aura and cult-leader charisma, that uncanny sense of control and understanding, reminded me of a dark preist of some better-forgotten arcane order.

This film leaves up a few loose ends that, while not necisary to the movie, I would still like to explore. How exactly did the fungi come about, where they actually created by the radiation treatement or just taken as specimines? and
(ending spoiler warning)
When the narrator states that he "ate the mushrooms," how could he have done that if he was already on the boat?