A great horror, one of the best I've ever seen from Japan. The best part is; nothing happens for the first half hour, and since I went into it not really knowing what I was watching I was settling in for a few hours of child-molesty drama. Nuh uh though, as before long the shotgun comes out.
It starts quite slow and thoughtful, mixing elements of disturbing drama with comedy (there are many one-note quirky characters here, such as the gross coughing teacher. This has been done a lot in Japanese and South Korean films, especially recently. Where it can feel hackneyed in western cinema though, it's usually subtle enough here to be funny - noteworthy, but not capable of taking over the movie. On a similar note, this is one of the ways that East Asian cinema makes horror more interesting, as I've seen few western ones with this kind of subtle character comedy. Usually in Europe of North America any comedy elements in horror have to be either characters who are full of jokes at the start of the movie, or a complete disregard for the seriousness of killing people and stuff, and having all the violence becomes cartoonish (which isn't a bad thing, and it was great in things like 'The Evil Dead' but that was back in the 80s, and American horror has changed disturbingly little since then. The effects are one of the few areas in which they have improved, but such cosmetics would only impress the most shallow of cinema goers). I could imagine Hollywood doing a remake of this where the killer is more obvious and it goes into the background of one or two of the kids too, and then they'd survive. As it is, none of the main characters other than the killer survives, and the kids that do, we only vaguely recognise). Holy crap that was a long set of brackets, I think I'll just cut it off there and start a new paragraph.
So, uh... where was I? Oh yeah, so it starts off slow but then at one point everything changes. Not only does the tone go from drama to extreme gory horror, but the pacing and the cinematography change too. Where the shots were slow and wide, we now get lots of camera movement and dutch angles. Where there were lots of toned down greys and subtle warm colours, we now have bright reds and yellows, clashing with greens and blues. They form a surreal parade through the bloodied school halls, bringing the movie to a gory crescendo. The massacre at the end was long and unrelenting, at times it was difficult to watch (saying a lot coming from me).
The cinematography was also great, with lots of long shots and slow pans, which turn to closed in interiors and sharp movements and shakes. It's really like watching two movies. There are several really well conceived camera set ups, too, like when the gross coughing teacher is murdered on the tube. Each carriage of the train is wobbling about, and the placing of the camera one carriage along at a fixed point emphasises the differences in movement between the two segments. The door also acts as a frame within the shot, and the drunken way it roams about the screen fits well with the murder taking place within it. It reminded me of that scene in 'The Sopranos' when Tony kills Pussy on his boat (what with the rocking and the creaking), and then the scenes during his fever dreams that reference that event.
An awesome horror that's both engaging and refreshing.
The cinematography was also great, with lots of long shots and slow pans, which turn to closed in interiors and sharp movements and shakes. It's really like watching two movies. There are several really well conceived camera set ups, too, like when the gross coughing teacher is murdered on the tube. Each carriage of the train is wobbling about, and the placing of the camera one carriage along at a fixed point emphasises the differences in movement between the two segments. The door also acts as a frame within the shot, and the drunken way it roams about the screen fits well with the murder taking place within it. It reminded me of that scene in 'The Sopranos' when Tony kills Pussy on his boat (what with the rocking and the creaking), and then the scenes during his fever dreams that reference that event.
An awesome horror that's both engaging and refreshing.
Lesson of the Evil: 78.3