Cinema Extreme #2 - Suicide Club (2002)

Director: Shion Sono Stars: Ryo Ishibashi, Masatoshi Nagashe, Mai Hosho

Review:

I have doubts to put this movie in the list of Cinema Extreme, as despite how thought provocative it is, it does not receive much ban from release. However the notorious opening scene does shocking and stunning enough to the point of anti-humanity, and I rate this as lying on the boundary of extreme cinema.

Girls ready to jump off onto the railroad.

The opening scene shows a mass suicide of 54 school girls. They were chatting happily on a train platform, and when the train comes they held hands and jumped to the railway together. This scene is powerful not for its gore factor, which we have seen something much exceeded, but the whole idea. Cute school girls kill themselves happily, under some teenage adorable background music. It sparkles all sorts of questions. Do they think suicide is hip? Do they think being death is much more happier than they already are?

Well what else could have happened?

Next we see people committed suicide all around Japan. People hung themselves together, stab himself in the neck, stuck her head into a burning oven, and chop up her own hands while preparing dinner. The police were on investigating but could have any leads except for a bag appearing in the scenes that contained human skins of the suicide victims stitched together.

Aghhh!!!The lights are ON!!! Wait....what?

It does builds up suspense and keeps us want to understand the whole affair. Why? Who is behind all these, and why stitch the skins together and give it to the police? The answer is quite obvious since every victim we saw them listen to a song from a teenage girl group. You know there is connection but what and why? Why do some teenage girl pop group want people commit suicide? The people receives call from a stranger, who is coughing, and claims he/she knows the truth and predict the next suicide event. And all that leads to big disappointment.

I thought all hope was lost when the movie suggests it is these punk rock dummies were whose behind.

It turns out the prediction was incorrect, and why is he/she coughing is never explained. A girl, whose boyfriend is a big fan of the pop group and a suicide victim, found out that the poster of the girl group contained a stupid sublimal message of suicide, by a stupid way of decoding it. She meet the girl group in their concert location, and the kids asked "Are you connected to yourself?" "You are connected to your boyfriend even if you died." "Why are you still living?" Ummm.....why not? So this is why they commit suicide? They are connected to themselves? What the fuck does that even mean?

No. I come to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of bubble gum.

I rather the reason goes unexplained, and in that case we make up our own reasons. Japan is the country that the suicide count topped the world, and there is a whole million of reasons for that. But this is not one of them. This is just confusing and stupid. Nobody aint kill themselve because a bunch of little kids asked them about question of life. What do the little kids know. Fuck off.

Some scenes stretches too long when there is nothing actually happening, like the police went to the train station platform to prevent mass suicide as predicted by the stranger on the phone. Nobody really jumped on the railway and we wasted about 15 minutes of screen time.

I would not put this movie in the "Good movie" catergory, but then, extreme movies tend to be bad. There is no consistent character and once the character was nearly established he dies and the narration was handed off to a character we barely know. Also I wasnt much scared since I know the movie title is Suicide Club. They commit suicides, and would not hurt me even if all of them dies.