After his wife dies in a car crash, a Japanese scientist sets about developing a drug that will restore life to the dead. But while the drug – codename DNX – does re-animate the dead, it also turns them into flesh-hungry zombies, so the project is shut down. Meanwhile, a quartet of violent thieves perform a diamond heist and arrange to meet a Yakuza gang out by a deserted factory in order to sell the jewellry onto them. Unfortunately for all concerned, this factory was the base for the experiments with DNX, and there's something moving deep within it...
Like the last 20 years never happened, Junk taps straight into the vein of post-Romero zombiedom once so favoured by Italians like Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei. There's not an original thought in its head – the DNX serum looks exactly like Re-Animator's bright green reagent, the bloody head shots are pure Dawn of the Dead, and there's a mass gut-chewing 'hot lunch' straight out of Zombie Flesh Eaters. It's full of stupid people doing stupid things, and these zombies move soooo slowly that the victims have to wait around for ages if they want any chance of being eaten. The acting is negligible and it's never explained why the Yakuza boss looks like a transvestite wrestler, or why the scientist's now-undead wife suddenly develops a platinum-bob haircut (she does spend most the film with her clothes off, mind).
There are some cheesy pleasures to be had here, and those looking for a quick fix of splatter won't be disappointed by the high level of gut-spilling and limb-munching. But Junk lacks the energy this kind of this thing really needs – director Atsushi Muroga has a few neat camera tricks but he's no Sam Raimi. For a far superior slice of Japanese Yakuza/zombie mayhem check out Ryuhei Kitamura's cult gem Versus.
