In case you missed it, 2025 was the year of the bear in Japan. A record number of people were killed or injured in ursine encounters; Akita Prefecture even had to call in the Japan Self-Defense Forces for help.

It was a heck of a time to be releasing a film about a rampaging grizzly with a taste for human flesh, which explains why Eisuke Naito¡¯s ¡°Higuma!! The Killer Bear¡± is arriving in theaters a couple of months later than originally scheduled.

Timely in more ways than one, the movie splices tongue-in-cheek splatter horror antics with a story delving into another recent media obsession: the world of illicit part-time gigs, known in Japanese as ¡°yami baito.¡±