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69%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #3,466
...out of 20,886 movies
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54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a subway train. This appears to be only the beginning of a string of suicides around the country. Does the new all-girl group Desert have anything to do with it? Detective Kuroda tries to find the answer, which isn't as simple as one could hope.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: July 14, 2004
Starting out the film, we meet up with a group of fifty-four schoolgirls at the Shinjuku bus station. The next train to Tokyo pulls up, and just before it does, the girls hold hands and jump in front of it. Detectives later find a duffel bag at the scene, containing a long band of human skin. The mass suicides continue to happen, and a lady known only as The Bat calls the detectives to point out a website to them; www.maru.ne.jp is a site that has red dots representing the women that have killed themselves, and white dots for the men. However, the odd thing here is that this site updates itself before even the police know about the suicides. The detectives are convinced that this is a cult, or a "suicide club", and scramble to figure out when the next group will off themselves so that they can attempt to stop it before it happens... but on the flipside, there's also a site that pops up called www.ruins.com that claims that there is no such thing as a suicide club. Meanwhile, a J-POP group of prepubescent girls who call themselves Dessart is taking over the airwaves and becoming huge pop stars; all the teens are buying their albums and singing their songs. As the movie progresses, the majority of the detectives are convinced that they're looking for a cult, someone who makes these kids go out killing themselves. Detective Kuroda thinks that it's a suicide club, plain and simple... a trend that will go away like all the others. Mitsuko, whose boyfriend kills himself, thinks that there's a connection between the suicides and the pop-group Dessart. Are either of them right, or is it something completely different?
You'll just have to watch the movie to find out, and trust me, it's not a very simple movie to figure out. This is one of those movies that will have you confused all the way throughout, and you'll really only get the meaning some time afterwards if at all. Depending on your view on how a movie should be presented, you may or may not enjoy that aspect, but I certainly did. The storyline works itself out in a very unique manner, leading you to believe one thing, and then shattering that theory in the next scene. While this works out pretty nice for the most part, it does result in a few plotholes here and there.
<Spoilers>For example, what's the deal with the ghosts of the nurses that pop up? That subplot seemed to pop up out of nowhere, and get dropped as quickly as it was brought up. Also, what about the kid with the cough that was heard on the phone? He wasn't in attendance in the closing scenes... is there two groups of kids? There's other bits here and there, but these are examples.</Spoilers>
Overall though, these small things didn't really hurt the movie, but it seemed like they were just thrown in to make you, the viewer, even more confused about what was going on. I personally thought that wasn't really needed, as the storyline was confusing enough by itself without throwing in things to intentionally confuse you even more.
Don't go into this expecting a horror film, as that is quite far from the truth. The marketing for this film seemed to try to make it look like a different version of "The Ring", and while I'm sure that drew in some ticket-buyers, that's not what this movie is about at all; in fact, every part of the trailer was made just for the trailer, and didn't appear in the actual movie. While that's not a fault of the film itself, it sure was misleading for those going into the movie. I'm not quite sure what genre this movie would end up falling under, as it's pretty far removed from any of the existing genres... but it did come out working very nicely.
Final thoughts: If you want a movie that has some tones of horror, some drama, and a hearty helping of the unique factor, and a movie that doesn't shove the meaning down your throat but instead, leaves it up to you to figure it out, this is definitely a film for you. I'd almost guarantee that this movie will initially leave you confused, but if you put some thought into it, you'll figure out what message they were trying to convey; and sadly enough, the message rings quite true. 10/10.
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#1:
C L
- added April 12, 2008 at 2:58am
I just watched this last night. I liked it a lot ,
but pretty much everything the review says is
true, it really leaves you to come up with your
own resolution.
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#2:
Ginose
- added April 17, 2008 at 10:47pm
Really? I thought it was pretty blunt with its
message.
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