Suicide Club Movie Review

A group of 54 Tokyo schoolgirls lock hands and happily leap in front of a subway, launching a fanatical interest in mass suicide among the youth of Japan. Before you go thinking this is a Japanese Heathers, rest assured it's anything but. Suicide Club is a psycho thriller imbued with harrowing imagery and a gruesome story in the creepy tradition of Ringu and Audition.

Start by taking a peek at the uncommon amount of gore: Bodies explode when they impact the ground, like enormous water balloons filled with blood. A belt made of human flesh shows up on a subway platform. Limbs and heads are everywhere. This is not a film for the faint of heart.

As a blood-spewing horror flick alone, Suicide Club is worth its salt. The thriller part of the flick is a bit cryptic, meandering through a series of mass suicides and Internet bulletin board investigations until the presumed "suicide club" ringleaders are revealed in a musical number that takes place in an abandoned bowling alley. The sequence makes absolutely no sense, until -- crazily -- suspicion eventually falls on a teenybopper musical group of 12-year-old girls called Dessart (or Desert, or Dessret, depending on the subtitle of the moment). Are there subliminal messages in their music telling kids to off themselves?

The film is at once utterly grotesque and uncommonly compelling. It's strange and unlikely, but Japanese thrillers always seem to thrive on the supernatural poking its head into the mundane world. Suicide Club suffers from its share of translation issues, but there's something about a dozen children leaping off the roof of their school that is cinematically universal.

Recommended.

Aka Jisatsu circle .

Lined up and ready for fun.