‘Connect’ Is New Body Horror Triumph From The Master Takashi Miike

The master of limbs flying, blood dripping body-horror is back as legendary Japanese film director Takashi Miike brings his big screen stylings to the small screen with a limited series release on Hulu called Connect.

It’s about a guy named Dongsoo who has some kind of tentactle being inside of his body that will grow tentacles and reattach his body parts if part of him is injured. After being murdered at the beginning of the show by an axe weilding maniac that fits right in with the greater Miike-verse, Dongsoo’s body puts itself back together, with the exception of one eye. The eye was left on an operating table and as he came back to life to the horror of the doctor that just sliced him open, he left it behind and burst out of the window. For the rest of the series he wears an eye patch because of his missing eye and begins seeing visons of places he’s never been to. Did his missing eye get put inside the body of a murderer? Uh oh! This is classic body horror stuff that will leave audiences of slicing and dicing thrilled. Miike’s occasional slow pacing is filled with little tic’s of life that punctuate the silences like the honking of the cars in a big city, Donsoo playing guitar by himsef, and people smoking cigarettes. It feels like the stillness itself is uncomfortable because of this but this is part of what attracts audiences to Miike’s style.

At the same time, there have been a series of bizarre murders in the town square where murdered bodies are covered in a resin-type material that make them appear to be statues. The bodies are swarmed by people who take pictures of them until they start dripping blood. This is just one of a start of cascading events that we know are going to be related to one another but we don’t know how they’ll work together, like the children from Dongsoo’s past that knows the monster inside him from the same flashback being repeated multiple times.

Dongsoo begins to start saving people being attacked on the street like a Batman-vigilante that can’t be killed. As his body gets attacked and rebuilds itself he terrifies the people that were chasing him. Naturally the stories begin to spread and people begin to close in on him who want the power of “Connect” for themselves and he eventually must confront the killer who is using his missing eye.

It all leads up to copious amounts of bloodletting and a deepening mystery tied in with astrology and forces beyond comprehension that encircle Dongsoo, the town detectives, and the murderer they’re both looking for.

Note: Connect is available on Hulu in America but Disney Plus in many other parts of the world.