Shion Sono
Suicide Club

The full-time school schedule is stressful. And if during the so-called lunch break the teachers assign you the task of cleaning the classroom, well, then it must be a nightmare. The bell never rings, the teacher seems to speak in Arabic, and you feel tired and victimized. A few notes passed by a nearby classmate may make the time pass more pleasantly. And finally, the bell. The school gates open, and various students head for the subway, which will take them home. But then the unthinkable happens: fifty-four girls throw themselves under the moving train. A childish tune accompanies the macabre mass suicide while blood splatters across the train windows and the unaware passersby.

Thus begins "Suicide Club," a cult film by one of the most visionary Japanese directors ever, who goes by the name of Shion Sono. A worthy successor of Miike, the young former porn director delves into the human subconscious, denouncing the school system and technology.

The director forsakes oriental ghosts and disregards the faint dark atmospheres of other oriental horror films, stepping on the accelerator toward the most explicit splatter.

Wait! But is this really a horror? Or the darkest depiction of a sad reality? Where suicide is metaphorical: one's personality, one's soul finds the path to self-destruction to be liked by others.

And so on with the suicides that unravel the story in many directions. Sono creates a complex work, where there are misleading clues (a roll of human skin found in a bag at the mass suicide site), scenes of the most explicit disgusting gore (like the housewife who, instead of cutting the cheese, ends up cutting her hand into little pieces) and metaphors (the mysterious and enigmatic ending).

A girl whose boyfriend committed suicide tries to investigate the mystery, but after all, she is just a foreign element in the story. She is a misleading element that Sono included to imbue the narrative with even more mystery. Because there is no film that accumulates so many questions and so few answers.

Who is causing the continuous suicides?

A pop band of girls singing songs with subliminal messages? A punk band that dismembers girls? A cryptic chat site?

No one knows. Starting with the director himself, who refuses to resolve the mystery, focusing instead on the psychology of the characters, so diverse yet puppets of impending fate.

One of the most extreme and bizarre films ever made, where blood flows abundantly but takes on a deep meaning of psychological death. Worth watching.