To say 'Suicide Club' is a trip, is an understatement. It’s been a while since I‘ve watched a film that has equally repulsed and mesmerized me. To tell you exactly what happened in the film and what it was about is something I’m not sure I could do. Yet, this is part of the film’s beauty, as right from the start the narrative takes you on a journey that even Alice in Wonderland may consider strange. The infamous opening scene features 50 Japanese high school girls lining up on a train platform, holding hands and then throwing themselves in front of an oncoming train, blood spewing everywhere. Things don’t let up from there, with a mysterious white sports bag turning up at the murder scenes, coils of the victims skins held within; a rather bizarre teen pop group; an even more bizarre cult/gang; and all manner of weirdness and grossness that populates this very unique film. Despite the impressively strange set pieces, the film does touch on isolation and how it is affecting Japanese society. It never delves too deep but uses a real subject to tell a weird and frightening tale that gets stranger and stranger as the film goes on. Yet, the film will most likely be remembered for its ghoulish appeal, and that’s no necessarily a bad thing.

Not easy to understand (and I’m not sure that’s even the point, as it seems to be more about the surreal experience than any actual coherency) but definitely unique, challenging and better to see knowing as little about it as possible. 'Suicide Club' may not be for those who like their cinema more conventional but for those who like the subversive, then 'Suicide Club' is heartily recommended.

Now that's what I call a set up. Unfortunately, set up is all this movie seems to give. Do we ever find out the mystery of why this is happening, or what the connection (remember that word) between the various clues are? I didn't.

There are some great moments in Suicide Club, but overall it's a mess. Yet, I just watched it again, hoping beyond hope to make some sense of it, perhaps being called back to revisit it on some primal level. No new insight came. The strange thing is, I have to recommend this film, at least as a rental.

It's hard to review this further whilst keeping my aim of providing spoiler proof reviews, because all that makes this film recommendable is purely based on the strange sights and sounds that you will experience, not the plot itself. I can't give you more insight than that. Intriguing, disappointing, intriguing again, then not so disappointing because you knew what to expect from the last time you were intrigued and then disappointed.

This is one compelling, gory, frightening, sometimes moving, absolute mess of a movie. Don't E-mail me explaining what it is all supposed to mean, because I already don't believe you.

It has the gore. It has the disturbing images. It has the shock value. It even has, as I said earlier, a fantastic set-up. It just doesn't deliver the goods on the story. I know sometimes things are best left unsaid, and endings left ambiguous, but Suicide Club just leaves you scratching your head, and in my case, feeling cheated out of any real explanations. Having said all this, it is a strangely compelling film nonetheless. I definitely recommend it as a rental, and if you are a fan of the strange, bloody, and bizarre, you probably wouldn't kick yourself in the head for buying it. But I make no promises on this one. Some people love it, some hate it. And some, like me, think they just might love it, given the right candle-lit atmosphere and a cheap bottle of red wine.

DO NOT BUY THIS FILM IF: You don't like gallons of fake blood; you can't stand gruesome sights; or you have a phobia of Japanese schoolgirls. You have been warned. This movie sucks, and yet ...... I almost want to watch it again right now. Maybe it IS a good movie. Hey! Maybe it speaks to one on a subconscious level, like a poem, or like a sculpture consisting of a piece of wood with a nail banged into it. Maybe.

PS - I'm adding this post script at a later date ... uh, just wanted to add ... I like this film more the longer I think about it. There's this one musical bit (not by the young girl group - a more sinister group, if you will, you'll know them when you see 'em) that I want to hear again. It's sort of bizarre, eerie, and I kinda really liked the song.

That's all.

PPS - The song is by Rolly and is called "Suicide KIss" if I remember correctly.

RECOMMENDATION: Gore hounds, I expect will love this, or at least like it. If you need your movies explained to you by your girlfriend/boyfriend then you will hate this. Everyone else will have to take their chances.

A team is assigned the case, lead by veteran family man Detective Kuroda (Ryo Ishbashi- (Audition) and the younger, less iron-skinned Detective Shibu. More deaths follow and sports duffel bags filled with squares of human skin that are sewn together and rolled into a circle are found at the scenes. The police precinct also receives phone calls from two mysterious sources, one seemingly the voice of a coughing child, the second from a computer hacker known as "The Bat", who directs them to a website of red and white dots, the dots representing suicides and the ones to come.

In somewhat similar fashion, Suicide Club initially looks like it may be a twisted genre look inside the Japanese psyche the way Battle Royale did. Battle Royale used teens as its cast and made a nice case about their need to succeed at an early age, hinge the rest of their life on those years. However, Suicide Club is a film that goes good for about an hour or so of its running time and then just falls apart.

Initially there seems to be a nice set up- the standard Japanese weirdo horror/mystery/investigation flick, like Angel Dust, Another Heaven, or The Ring, with perhaps a nice little metaphorical message about Japanese culture. A scene on a school rooftop where students are discussing the subway incident, joking around about a "suicide club", suddenly takes a unnerving turn. It suggests something about the teen mentality of follow the leader, follow the trend, and takes it to the edge. And there I was, thinking this was a neat little offbeat horror thriller with some nice message behind it. Like Sam Fuller, a cult film with a point.

But, as the film settles into its final half hour, you soon realize that the story was not as focused as you thought. Loose ends abound. Characters behave stupidly. And its all under the umbrella of weirdness for weirdness sake. The story shifts between three characters- the detectives, a girl whose boyfriend committed suicide and uncovers the suicide deaths connection to a popular teen act, and The Bat, who is kidnaped by a Ziggy Stardust wannabe androgynous rocker named Genesis and his cronies, who hang out in a bowling alley with people and animals stuffed in white bags that they stomp over. When the heavily bedazzled Genesis launches into a musical number singing lyrics like "...An unfamiliar yellow dog keeps grinning as tears us from the ones we love... Because the dead shine all night long...." you realize its only going to go downhill from there.

COMMENTS
I heard about this film a while back and thought it sounded very interesting, so I was glad to finally check it out. It's just too bad the official DVD release doesn't have English subtitles. I had to get an unofficial copy off ebay, because those are the only ones that offered the subtitles.

The movie hooks you from the beginning when over 50 high school students commit a mass suicide by throwing themselves in front of a subway train. Very intense scenes and they didn't hold back on the blood and gore. The story, like I said above, is basically about a detective that is trying to find the cause of all the suicides in Japan.

This is a pretty good film that should please gore fans, like myself. I was a bit confused towards the end, but then again I heard from the director some time ago that the movie wasn't really supposed to make sense. What I liked most about this was how the director made the deaths somewhat humorous at times. Much like what they did in Final Destination 2, the deaths were ironic and gave the audience something to laugh at, because we all know that suicide isn't funny, but you can't help but laugh at some of the stuff they come up with here.

The movie actually does have some creepy scenes at times, which surprised me, because I thought it wasn't going to really go towards that direction. It wasn't a bad thing. The directing and acting is pretty good and I really enjoyed the gore and humor in the deaths, which is why I decided to give the movie a solid 7-rating. It's a good film.

Suicide Club is the international title, but the literal English title would be Suicide Circle, which is why it says that on the poster. I'm awaiting the next official DVD release of this movie, which will hopefully have English subtitles. The unofficial version really sucks.

OVERALL
Good movie that plays with suicide. Loaded with blood and gore. I recommend this film.

After the subway suicides, police detective Kuroda (Audition’s Ryo Ishibashi) receives a tip from a mysterious girl calling herself "The Bat" who alerts the police to a website which cryptically chronicles the rash of suicides in Tokyo--before they even happen. Kuroda investigates further, while the plague of self-inflicted deaths increases throughout the city, with young bodies plummeting from the sky on a regular basis. Are the jumpers part of a cult? How can the police explain a chain of human flesh found in a bag at the subway? And what is the connection between the suicide wave and the megahit Japanese teen-girl pop combo Desert?

Poet-turned-writer/director Sion Sono doesn't always provide simple solutions, but rather--like the cinema of David Lynch or Kiyoshi Kurosawa--he lures us deeper into an enveloping web of intrigue, and just when you think the film can't possibly become any more disturbing, you're instantly proven wrong. Sono directed a half-dozen films throughout the 90's, but nothing to prepare us for the sheer brilliance of this breakthrough tour de force--a study of contemporary Japanese morality that is scary, comical, very complex, and very bloody (we're not kidding, so consider yourself warned). Highest recommendation.