In 2004, Go Shibata unleashed Late Bloomer, the result of his five year collaboration with actor, Sumida Masakiyo, who suffers from cerebral palsy. The movie cast Sumida as a disabled serial killer and although a battle with its distributor kept it off the market for three years, when it was finally released it became a cult hit. This time Shibata doesn't want to make a cult movie, he wants to start an actual cult. Imagine A Hard Day's Night if it was about Aleister Crowley instead of the Beatles, and you've got a glimpse of the Magikal Mystery Tour he's undertaking here. It's a movie that'll kick down your doors of perception like a psychedelic SWAT team.

Behold, the Apocalypse! Souls are destroyed by greed, the global economic crisis and the Human Enslavement Project run by the evil Kato the Catwalk (in a rubber Halloween mask) who encourages gangs of Hot Boys to beat up the homeless while cruising around Kyoto in her luxury hearse. Opposing her is Mr. Abe, a yakuza magician who leads an army of psychic children as they protect Kyoto with mystical amulets made of garbage. Enter Shinsuke, a deadbeat who supports himself by mooching off his girlfriend, and Tsutomu, a homeless bum constantly tripping on Day Glo Imperial Mushrooms. Conscripted by Mr. Abe, they're forced to monitor the whereabouts of Terada, an adult who slaughtered the staff of a personal loan company when he was 16 and who has grown into a lightning rod for dark mystical energies.

Less a movie and more an occult working scored to an unholy blend of ska and thrash metal (courtesy of Kyoto's indie music scene), Doman Seman is likely to cause fist fights in the theater but it works because Shibata weaves driving music, insane images, a bizarre personal cosmology and his passionate opposition to the dehumanizing effects of modern living into a magic carpet ride that moves at Mach 5. It's nothing less than a cinematic exorcism whose goal is to purge the demons of the 20th Century from our souls.