by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: Discs: 2, The Film: 3/5, The Extras: 3/5, Overall: 6/10
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Ryō Ishibashi, Masatoshi Nagase, Akaji Maro, Rolly, Saya Hagiwara, Yoko Kamon
Intro:
Confounding, subversive and obtuse as hell ...
The Film:
The Suicide Club, the 2001 Japanese cult horror flick from director Sion Sono, has one of the most jaw-droppingly audacious openings of all time. On a perfectly ordinary day at Shinjuku station, 54 happy, normal school girls link arms, count down to zero and leap in front of a fast moving train. Blood drenches the station as each of the girls is torn apart, leaving the witnesses covered in gore and horrified with disbelief, asking “Why? Why would they do this?”
Now, an ordinary genre flick would then spend the next 90 minutes or so explaining why such a thing happened, giving us a protagonist to root for and an antagonist to hate. The Suicide Club, however, is not an ordinary genre flick, something that ends up being both a curse and a blessing.
After that opening, the film takes a number of tangents. There are a trio of detectives – Detective Kuroda (Ryō Ishibashi), Detective Shibusawa (Masatoshi Nagase) and Detective Murata (Akaji Maro) – who attempt to unravel the case (and the bizarre spirals of human skin found on the scenes of the increasing number of suicides). There are nurses and other school children who begin to add to the body count. And there’s a bizarre, homicidal Genesis P-Orridge style figure, Muneo “Genesis” Suzuki (Rolly), who is intimately connected with the deaths, oh and a wholesome pop group, Dessert, that have some kind of relevance to the whole thing. Yet, for all these disparate subplots, none of them really explain the central mystery and the entire film has a sense that you’re watching a bunch of red herrings and increasingly bizarre digressions.
In all honesty, it’s not an entirely satisfying way to watch a movie. Now, don’t get us wrong, weird shit is the bread and butter of great cult films, and early David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky do a superb job of being divorced from normal reality yet emotionally satisfying, somehow. The Suicide Club, on the other hand, asks a lot of questions and gives either no answers or ones that are frustratingly opaque. Rarely has a film been so defiantly keen to resist expanding upon its opening salvo. From a critical perspective this is quite interesting, from a movie enjoyment point of view, it’s kind of a pain in the arse. A clever clogs bit of subversion that doesn’t really distinguish itself in any meaningful way.
Apparently, the director’s 2005 prequel Noriko’s Dinner Table goes into more detail. All good and well, but if you require an additional 159-minute film to explain your initial movie, perhaps you should have spent a little more time tinkering with the script.
There’s stuff here to like, mind you, and for all the confounding moments, there are some beautifully observed sequences and strong character work. Not to mention a pervasive sense of doom, isolation and unease. Perhaps that’s the key with Suicide Club, stop trying to pin down what it’s all about and get caught up in the vibe. For many, however, that’s going to be a bit too much of an ask.
The Extras:
For a film with such an outsize reputation, the extras and special features for Suicide Club are a little light on the ground. There’s a single audio commentary with cinema scholar Ariel Schudson and Dismembered Limbs & Buckets of Blood: “Suicide Club” with SFX guru Yoshihiro Nishimura – which is a very entertaining look back at the making of the film and, perhaps more importantly, Japan’s horror zeitgeist at the time of release.
Best in show goes to video essay Just Desserts: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Suicide Club from Australia’s own horror nonna Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. This is because Alexandra does a hell of a job recontextualising the film you’ve just watched, underlining its themes and giving the perhaps very confused viewer some much needed clarity and food for thought.
Other than a trailer, that’s the whole package! Director Sion Sono doesn’t appear at all (possibly due in part to some 2022 sexual misconduct allegations against him) and the whole caper feels a little bare bones.
In terms of physical extras, there’s a nice 48-page book of extra materials and essays, a striking slipcase by Jeff Aphisit, some art cards and a poster, but that’s all she wrote. An unusually feature light release from Umbrella who ordinarily packs these things to the gills.
The Verdict:
Confounding, subversive and obtuse as hell, Suicide Club is as fascinating as it is frustrating. A cult film in every sense of the word, it defies easy definition and, frankly, offers a viewing experience that isn’t always enjoyable.
Presented here in a schmick 4K print with good (albeit few) extras, this is undeniably the best way to view the film. Whether you actually want to take the leap off a platform and get splattered by a fast train of confusion is a matter entirely up to you.
