Shin Kamen Rider is playing as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.

During the rapid-fire in media res opening of Hideaki Anno’s Shin Kamen Rider, memories were conjured of the Power Rangers shows of my youth. People dressed in bulky-headed costumes chase each other down and then prepare to battle in clunky hand-to-hand combat. It was not a second after the film reminded me of that quaint franchise that the masked hero of the title started popping the heads of attacking grunts like ticks and cracking into their ribcages like one cracks an ice tray. Pulpy blood splattering on the nearby trees.

Then, we witness motorcyclist turned cyborg grasshopper Takeshi (Sosuke Ikematsu) as he experiences a severe panic attack brought on by the murders he just committed.

Takeshi has been engineered into something of a superhuman by an organization named S.H.O.C.K.E.R. While wearing a metallic helmet shaped like the head of a grasshopper and running a machine on his body that looks like a computer cooling fan, he can harness the power of others’ life forces. With this power, he is tasked with taking down the organization that made him, whose creations are on a mission to enslave all of humanity.

Shin Kamen Rider, based on the popular multimedia franchise, carries the camp and cartoony action that one would expect from mechanized bug people fighting each other. The hero being horrified by his own instinct to kill should fly in the face of this humorous tone, but the film playing it (mostly) straight adds to the enjoyment. There is an absurdist humor to one of the Rider’s attackers telling him, “Now that you’ve killed a human, you know the happiness it brings,” only to moments later see the Rider looking down at that villain’s blood (literally) on his hands.

There are times, though, where the camp exceeds the boundaries of what the live action format allows for. The Rider’s second major battle is against a heinously designed bat man (not that one). The set piece involves poor CGI which results in subpar choreography and bad, jokey reaction shots.

While the action ranges from serviceable to genuinely exciting in other instances, the entire film is hampered by an emptiness in the production design. Barren sets — in particular, the black void that houses the climactic final battle — render the action flatter and make the film feel hollow and unpopulated.

Along the same lines, there are essentially no people present who are not combatants. The only time civilians are present, it is a deliberate machination of the plot. The world of the film is very insular and cut off from broader society, which dampens the stakes a great deal. The shadow org. creating these augmented superhumans has, we are told, major implications on all of humanity. Yet we never get a sense of this threat (as no one is ever directly threatened).

Shin Kamen Rider is a light and at times exciting action film. It may be the weakest of this series of “Shin” films (Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman being the others). But it still manages to strike a tone that balances cheese and sincerity effectively.

Shin Kamen Rider: B-

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As always, thanks for reading!

—Alex Brannan (Twitter, Letterboxd, Facebook)