First of all, I'm currently reading the manga and I'm a big fan of Miike, so I went to watch it with quite high expectations. Aaand it was good, really good.

The bad points:
- The dialogues sometimes were sooo very cheesy
- Sometimes the acting was a bit...er...too much

And now the good:
- the story is totally crazy and over the top, but it never takes itself seriously. Yeah, even all the people in the movie think everything happening on screen is absurd.
- same goes for special effects: you know it's not just badly done CGI, but something that was meant to be so cartoonish.
- there's some gore, but not too much to be unbearable (mind it, the movie is still far from family-friendly, but there's no Koroshiya Ichi-style stuff)
- good looking actors everywhere, everywhere!
- the characters get some backside stories without being overly dramatic
- you can never, never tell what's going to happen next.
- it's fast paced, funny and full of suspense from beginning to end!

All in all, it's a good take on survival games horror, and I am soo much waiting for a follow up! Not for the fainthearted but I would recommend it to everyone else!

Read More

It's always hard to judge anthologies as a whole because of course some stories included are so much better than others, but I really like the overall tone of this one.

Torihada is a collection of short stories, most of the times about something creepy of slightly unsettling happening during and ordinary day in an ordinary life. Sometimes it kind of skirts the line between natural and supernatural, so you could call it an even mix of thriller, horror and urban legend-like surprise endings. Sometimes the conclusion really goes to unexpected places, and even when you can sort of tell in what direction the story is going, getting to the end is still delightfully creepy. What I like the most is that you can take some stories pretty much at face value but most of them have a deeper meaning/social commentary tone that make them even creepier.

You'll get no ghosts, creeping hair or monsters (unless you count the neighbors hehe), but you'll still get a scarily fun time out of it.

Read More

The premise is something we've heard so many times before: a bunch of people wake up in an unknown location and no help is coming. They have to take part in a deadly game and there's no way out of it. So what makes this movie different and why did I like it so much?

- The tone is very gritty and sober: no cartoons, shrilly music, puppets, creepy voices, funny and over the top presentation to explain the game rules. It's always very serious and never goes into silly territory (this goes for both the story and the actor's performances).
- It managed to find a clever way to force people into the game and simultaneously to bar them from escaping.
- It relies on psychological tension, the rules are very simple and straightforward but it keeps being interesting and gripping and it never resorts to cartoonish violence.
- It maintains an aura of mystery (what follows could be considered a minor spoiler!!): throughout the movie we see no police investigation, no undercover organization, no other human beings whatsoever except for the ones who are playing, which in my opinion is the best choice for this kind of movie (and such a choice is SO rarely made).
- The acting is very good! It's realistic and never exaggerated, people go into fits and have meltdowns and shout and are shitty to each other but never in a way that make you wanna grind your teeth.

All in all it's pretty good and the tone is quite different from most death game movies out there, so you might wanna check this out.

btw, I also recommend trying the werewolf game in real life if you're up for it (I mean the non-deadly variant of course!), I did and it was pretty entertaining!

Read More