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#163 - Suicide Club
Sion Sono, 2002
When fifty schoolgirls join hands and jump in front of an oncoming train together, a pair of detectives must investigate the cause of that and other bizarre suicides.
Suicide Club definitely starts off with a darkly fascinating premise - investigators trying to figure out why young people are randomly committing suicide, often in groups and with bags of stitched-together slices of human skin being discovered nearby - but the premise only goes so far as it becomes the launching pad for a variety of disparate approaches that struggle to cohere into a satisfactory whole. Though the concept of a psychological contagion prompting acts of extreme violence against not just one another but also one's self is a potent source of horror, Suicide Club mainly forgoes such an approach in order to play the subject for as much black comedy as possible, whether it's through some absurdly gory deaths or some satirical jabs at youth culture and the ways in which they are affected by (or willingly interact with) the concept of a "Suicide Club" and the police investigation into it. While this does yield the occasional decent scene (such as an early one that takes place on a high-school rooftop), they are fundamentally disconnected by the film's constant shifting that goes beyond mere tonal jumps and eventually makes it hard to truly give a damn about anything that's happening by the time the credits roll. While I sort of get the feeling that this might be intentional, I question whether or not such an intent even matters when the execution feels this shoddy.
Sion Sono, 2002
When fifty schoolgirls join hands and jump in front of an oncoming train together, a pair of detectives must investigate the cause of that and other bizarre suicides.
Suicide Club definitely starts off with a darkly fascinating premise - investigators trying to figure out why young people are randomly committing suicide, often in groups and with bags of stitched-together slices of human skin being discovered nearby - but the premise only goes so far as it becomes the launching pad for a variety of disparate approaches that struggle to cohere into a satisfactory whole. Though the concept of a psychological contagion prompting acts of extreme violence against not just one another but also one's self is a potent source of horror, Suicide Club mainly forgoes such an approach in order to play the subject for as much black comedy as possible, whether it's through some absurdly gory deaths or some satirical jabs at youth culture and the ways in which they are affected by (or willingly interact with) the concept of a "Suicide Club" and the police investigation into it. While this does yield the occasional decent scene (such as an early one that takes place on a high-school rooftop), they are fundamentally disconnected by the film's constant shifting that goes beyond mere tonal jumps and eventually makes it hard to truly give a damn about anything that's happening by the time the credits roll. While I sort of get the feeling that this might be intentional, I question whether or not such an intent even matters when the execution feels this shoddy.