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45%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #14,082
...out of 20,886 movies
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In the year 2025, the Japanese government decides to send juveniles with a murder gene to an uninhabited island in the Pacific under the premise of rehabilitation. Conducting various studies to determine the ferocity of the hidden gene, they implement an experiment with the code name "Tag," causing deep-seated murder impulses to emerge by erasing their memories-resulting in boys and girls who brutally kill each other.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: April 19, 2006
The year is 2025, and scientists have discovered that through the miracles of DNA testing, they can run a simple test on people to find out who has the "murder gene" and is therefore likely to succumb to violence at some point. The scientists want to do some more experiments with this new-found knowledge (to remove the urge to kill, we assume, although it's never really mentioned), and to do this, they send a group of sixteen high school students with this gene to a remote, deserted island. Each student is forced to wear a bracelet which has either a green light or a red light on it... a green light means that the urge to kill isn't present, while a red light means - you guessed it - they're about to snap.
The star of the movie is a fellow who is probably named Shougo (Masahiro Kuranuki). Did I mention that each student has had their memory erased as part of the experiment and that they don't even remember their own names? The name on the bracelet is all that he has to go with, so I'll go with that as well for this review. Anywho, Shougo eventually meets a couple of other green-light students, including the mute Osamu (Syunsuke Osaka) and the rather cute Shiori (Yoshika Kato). While these are our main characters for the evening, a number of other students come and go... but to the save the element of surprise for the viewer, I'll omit their names from the description. The three are forced to survive against the murderous red-light students while attempting to find out what happened, why they're here, and how to get off the island.
To begin the actual review segment of this entry, I must admit that this storyline sounds an awful lot like another popular Japanese film known as Battle Royale. Indeed, the two movies share a lot of elements (students killing one another on a deserted island); however, there is a twist to be found around the thirty minute mark in this one that completely changes things and takes this movie down a much different path. I won't reveal said twist in this review, but I will say that the storyline works out decently... well, sort of. I say "sort of" because the premise behind that twist is interesting, and there's a few shining moments to be found mixed in here and there, but overall, it falls flat.
The reason that it falls flat, in my view, is due to a few blunders on the part of the director. The first is the lack of character given to the actors and actresses in the film. With the obvious exception of the main people, everybody is just "that guy with the ice-pick" or "the girl with the purple hat" - there's no sort of back-story given to them, and in every case, the character either dies or disappears soon after we see them. The main characters fare a little better in this respect, but the stories there are still pretty weak, especially for Osamu - the one character who actually seemed like he would have had an interesting story.
The second problem that I had with this film was the lack of explanations to be found regarding the story as a whole. Asian films are notorious for leaving the ending of the film up to the viewer, but there is a huge difference between that style (letting the audience piece the clues together and come up with their own ideas about what happened) and what we find here. We're told the basics of the storyline (what I mentioned in the synopsis and a few other choice details), but as for the main things, the audience is basically on their own. The best way to describe the film is to say that things happen and there's a vague story behind these things, but in the long run, you'll have no idea what in the hell is going on or why.
The best part of the film has to be the alternate ending found on the AsiaVision release of this DVD. The "real" ending ends on a solemn note with one of the main characters dying. In this alternate ending, the same thing happens... but then, it fades to black and this person gets up and begins to dance. Soon, this person is joined by the other students who died in the film, and we get to watch all of them dance around to a mixture of J-Pop and techno music. This is one of the most bizarre endings to a film that I have ever seen, and it definitely entertained yours truly.
However, a unique alternate ending on the DVD can't save a film or make it worthy of a recommendation. The storyline has some interesting elements but eventually loses steam and falls apart, while the characters have about as much life to them as the bracelets that they are forced to wear. Also, with all of the students that die in this film, I couldn't even recommend it for some mindless gorehound entertainment as it's pretty weak in that regard as well. Avoid this one unless you're heavily obsessed with Battle Royale and just have to see anything remotely resembling that storyline, no matter how much of a failure it turns out to be. 4/10.
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