Horror Movie Review: Suicide Club, an independent movie from Japan 2001.
Suicide Club is a Japanese 2001 horror thriller that makes you as an audience bring a lot of theories, with a story that is a mix of bloods and gore fest and detective crime thriller, and with a cute pop group singing songs that are not what they seems.
Story:
Detective Kuroda (Ryo Ishibashi) and his team are investigating a troublesome case about multi suicide cult that plague the nation. 54 schoolgirls together holding hands and commit suicide together by jumping down the subway station while the train run through them. More suicide victim appears the next days, with all different ages and profession of work. The only clue Kuroda has is a rolled skin puzzle. The puzzle contain 200 pieces of human skin that's been shaved from the victim, only that the victim so far is not 200 people and some of the skin has a tattoo that none of the victims except one had a tattoo, and that means those who has a shaved tattoo could be the next victim but who? Meanwhile a young girl named Mitsuko (Sayako Hagiwara) who is girlfriend to one of the suicide cult victim suspect a girl children pop group named Dessert (Chika Kumagai, Saon Fujita, Tomoe Adachi, Miyu Sawada, and Kazumi Seikine) is responsible by sending suicide codes by their live performances on TV. But they are not alone, a crazy songwriter and his heavy metal henchmen has kidnap a computer hacker who call herself the Bat (Yoko Kamon) who has discovered the codes on Internet and now she is prisoner of this Charles Manson wannabe, his name is Genesis (Rolly).
A Incomplete movie or deliberately incomplete?
The movie is a complete mess with plot holes, none of the characters seems to be from the same universe, the script doesn't know weather it's suppose to be a crazy horror gore film or a exiting cop thriller or a survive drama. The movie is unbalanced or shall I say maybe unfinished?
I have read a crazy theory from another critic from New Zealand, it says there is a possibility that this movie was made during the 90s to early 2000s. Because some scenes look older then the other and the technologies in the movie including phones, computer and Television looks before 1998, even a fun fact on IMDB mention that as trivia. For example Rolly who play the main villain looks like he is late 20s or early 30s, and he is born 1963, if this movie was made 2001 he would have looked almost in his 40s. Another example is the group Dessert, this group has about 3 songs, 2 of them they look like 10 year olds, but in their last song they look like 12 year olds, and I think that's why they didn't get any acting scenes due to the time schedule, for example one of the final scenes Mitsuko is in a stage and talks to a bunch of kids about if she is connected to herself or not? I think that scene was ment to be for Dessert at first but changed because that scene was properly filmed in a years gap, it will show clearly that the girls became teenagers and it would not match the other scenes. Also in the MANGA book that was made after, there were actually one survivor of the 54 suicide girls and her name was Saya that's the nickname to the actress who played the role of Mitsuko, maybe Mitsuko was the soul survivor in the script but got scratched during filming.
However, thanks to some great comments, another theory is introduced, and that is this movie is part of a Trilogy that wasn't finished, only two movies were finished "Suicide Club" from 2001 and "Norikos Dinner Table" from 2006, the third movie was never made so far and the unbalance is a natural theme of the director Sion Siono, so it was deliberate and makes more sense but that doesn't explain why the Dessert kids looked older in their last performance and why Rolly looked so young.
