This movie is hard to score because it excels at one thing while failing miserably at another. It's about the end of Earth, (something like that) and the following chaos that follows. I'm sure that some point was lost in it's translation, but the movie does not seem to have a goal or distinct message, except for survival, which may be the message. The two lead characters are VERY weak and seem to have no chemistry at all. They don't even seem like they could, or would fall in love. And any other characters you meet are not explored to any extent, and I don't know why not because in parts this movie seems to DRAG-ON for decades! It gets really slow, but if it added something to the story I would not mind but it's slow for SLOWNESS sake, as if to fill up the 1 1/2 with mindless banter. Well that's the bad, and now the good, the effects are the best catastrophe-movie effects I have ever seen BAR-NONE! They completely beat any inane American Movie of the genre, and probably for 10% of what Hollywood over-spends for effects. Everything looked pretty real, the Horizon was always ash-covered and the cities really looked bombed out, and the meteors towards the end looked REALLY good, blasting through buildings like they were mere paper. Actually, the effects are the only reason to watch the movie but it does impart a feeling of dispare and survival, but the story needed more work.

Having watched a huge panorama of movies already, i was pleased to see Dragonhead. It is an Easter-Asian movie, and i decided to watch quite a few others after this one.

The special effects are just good, sometimes really good. It is a good approach to such a movie too, because you start to think it's a nuclear disaster at the beginning, and then you find out it's actually something a bit worse than that, when the crust of the earth moves, the Earth's balance shifts. That's true, but especially when the magnetic field gets messed up, our apocalypse will come, or rather will rain down on us without holding back the tears of destruction.

When you have a volcano popping up not far from you, and throwing up huge magma bricks at you, that is not nice, i wasn't surprised the humans, well at least the Japanese lost the will to fight for life. But then again, some people have to believe in the future, because there is always a future, no matter how grim things look like.

I put 10/10 for Dragonhead, because of its realism, Apocalypse is not about happiness, it is boring, and everyone just needs to find the will to fight on, against all odds. If you like something a bit different than big blockbusters, then this movie is so for you, because in Asia they approach everything from an objective point of view, that is what makes their quality.

I had some reservations before borrowing this movie from the local library. I wasn't sure whether to expect a low-budget dragon movie or something with really bad set design. I couldn't have been more off. This movie may have some of the most spectacular sets I've ever seen. No details or expense was spared in creating the visually stunning and surreal backdrop. The plot has a nice forward momentum full of action and trepidation. But definitely go for the subtitles instead of the English overdub. Nothing can ruin a movie more than an awful dubbing in that ridiculous English voice with the accent. You have to hand it to the Japanese - they are much better at making these kinds of movies than Hollywood seems to be.