Rating: B+
Dir: Kenta Fukasaku
Star: Nao Matsushita, Ami Suzuki, Maju Ozawa, Shoko Nakagawa
Well, this was an unexpected treat. Probably in the top five most WTF? Japanese movies I’ve seen – and that is, as you can imagine, a high bar. I was somewhat prepared, given this synopsis. “Instead of enjoying a spa vacation, two friends find themselves faced with lunatics planning on strapping them to crosses and chopping off legs.” Yeah, it’s like that. However, it’s not just like that, and is actually less sleazy than I expected. Outside of occasional moments where it could have been a “Quentin Tarantino Presents…” film (if you know what I mean, and I think you do), it’s quite chaste. Even when frolicing and hot-springing, our heroines wear towels.
Yet it’s still barking mad. Indeed the crucifixion and leg-amputation cult may not be the weirdest characters here. They are devoted to chasing down Shiyori Mizuno (Matsushita), who has come up for a nice spa weekend, getting over an ugly break-up with her boyfriend. This was at the behest of bestie Aiko Hiuke (Suzuki) – except she may have her own agenda. Aiko also has her own problems. She’s a bit of a slut, and Reika (Ozawa),the girlfriend of one of her conquests has followed Aiko, out for blood. She’s the one on the cover. Wielding the F-sized scissors, which may not be her largest weapon either. And she turns out to be unstoppable, to a degree even Michael Myers would consider excessive.
The film does a particularly good job of keeping the two strands of the story moving forward in parallel. It tracks Shiyori for a while, then jumps back to show what has happened to Aiko over the same time. Takes a little bit of getting used to, but is an effective approach. I was particularly impressed since I was not particularly impressed with Fukasaku’s Battle Royale 2. This seems a much more assured piece of work. The director seems under no obligation to explain or justify the insanity. That’s your problem. He commits wholeheartedly to it, and just when you think it has peaked, the movie seems to find another, higher gear. In this (and other ways), it reminded me of Violator, though that dates from over a decade later.
There are a lot of moving parts, in that it feels as if almost everyone here is not being honest about their intentions. I might need to watch it again, which would give me a different perspective as things unfold. Wouldn’t exactly be a chore: barely were the final credits rolling, and I was reaching for my phone to check into adding thus one to the permanent collection. The biggest flaw might be the cellphone thing. They make a point of doing the “no signal” thing on the way to the hot spring inn, only for the cellphones to work nearly flawlessly – well, when necessary for the plot. Yet nobody calls the cops. Though if that’s the worst flaw in a movie, it’s hard to complain.