2LDK Movie Review

2LDK refers to a Japenese listing for an apartment: 2 bedrooms, plus living, dining, and kitchen areas. Inhabiting this 2LDK on one fateful day are two troubled young women, both actresses, and both borderline psychotic in their own special way.

Played by Maho Nonami and Eiko Koike, these girls are anal and obsessive to varying degrees: One even individually labels her eggs. The film opens as the roommates learn they are the final two in consideration for a big movie part. That's stress enough, but then one girl uses the shampoo of another, one deletes a boyfriend's voicemail, and soon enough the chainsaw's out and the blood is flying.

Along the way there are foreshadowing flashbacks and internal monologue voice-overs from both sides -- revealing that both of them are crazy and capable of vengeance. But it's the degree to which they go over the final 40 minutes of the film that prevents you from turning away. Contained completely within their condo, every household implement is turned into a weapon of death. There's knives and cudgels galore, but there's also attacks-a-plenty by drowning, electrocution, tile cleaning spray, and rice cooker. Writer/director Yukihiko Tsutsumi gets plenty of props for ingenuity, if nothing else.

Tsutsumi (he's made a few films before this, I've never seen any of them) also makes excellent use of worm's-eye, bird's-eye, and fish-eye looks at the set. We're stranded here, and he lets us know it. The occasional use of weird, bobbing-in-the-ocean camerawork makes you feel a little queasy before the bloodshed ever starts, and it fits in well with what's to come. The early scenes are reminiscent of the buildup in Audition, but Tsutsumi still has a ways to go before he gets a perfect handle on setting up the mood for terror -- a little more interesting resolution and explanation of their murderous tendencies would have made 2LDK a little more satisfying, too. Both Nonami and Koike are well cast as demure gals with hearts in different places.

Clocking in at a spry 70 minutes, this is one quick visit to hell you aren't likely to forget soon.

On DVD, you also get a making-of featurette and, bizarrely, footage from a press conference announcing the production of the movie.