"Yakuza Apocalypse" - Miike's back

[Drunk Monk]

I posted the trailer for As the Gods Will here: <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://brotherhoodofdoom.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3373&p=21519#p21519">viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3373&p=21519#p21519</a><!-- l -->. That's on the Movie Trailers thread where stuff like this should go, ED.

As the Gods Will 神さまの言うとおり
Japan
Contemporary horror fantasy
2014, colour, 2.35:1, 116 mins
Directed by Miike Takashi (三池崇史)



By Derek Elley

Mon, 31 August 2015, 10:00 AM (HKT)

Death-game horror is well-above-average Miike Takashi for most of its going. Asian and genre events.
Story

Tokyo, the present day. High-school student Takahata Shun (Fukushi Sota) is bored with his life, whiling away his time with computer games and oblivious to the feelings of fellow-pupil Akimoto Ichika (Yamazaki Hirona), his childhood friend and next-door neighbour. Then one day a talking daruma 達磨 doll appears in his class, decapitates the teacher, and starts playing a death game with the students. With the help of classmate Satake (Sometani Shota), Shun survives and in the corridor outside bumps into Ichika, the sole winner of her class. In the gym they meet other survivors, and become embroiled in a game with a giant Beckoning Cat (maneki-neko まねき猫). With the help of psychopathic school bully Amaya Takeru (Kamiki Ryunosuke), who later disappears, Shun and Ichika survive again. All over the globe, high schools are being affected in the same way, with 10 million students already dead. Those who survive are called "god's children" and held in huge floating cubes floating above the cities. The games are televised for the populations to watch. After being gassed, Shun wakes up to find himself in a room in the Tokyo cube where those with family surnames starting with "t" are held; among them is Takase Shoko (Yuki Mio), whom he once befriended on a rooftop when she was about to suicide. Their next game - to win the key to the door - is against four kokeshi dolls. After winning and saving Shoko, Shun meets other survivors, including Ichika. And then, before the next game with a giant polar bear, Takeru suddenly appears.
Review

It's back to high school for MIIKE Takashi 三池崇史 with death-game horror As the Gods Will 神さまの言うとおり, which has a satisfyingly high amount of cartoon gore, student body-count and playful humour, even if there's not much below the increasingly repetitive surface. Made after his okay psychothriller Over Your Dead Body 喰女 but before the disappointing Yakuza Apocalypse 極道大戦争, it finds the 55-year-old maverick, who's still averaging two sizeable movies a year, on well-above-average form, in his best teenage outing since Lesson of the Evil 悪の教典 (2012).

Based on a five-volume manga of the same name, originally serialised in 2011-12, Gods doesn't have much point beyond "be careful what you wish for" and a lot of piffle about the survivors becoming "god's children"; but then audiences don't go to Miike movies expecting deep psychology or life lessons. The game's the thing here and, though the first hour is the best, Miike serves up a good-looking, classically framed entertainment between the excellent visual effects and manga-like escapades.

The script by YATSU Hiroyuki 八津弘幸, a TV drama and manga writer who co-wrote death-letter horror Ikigami イキガミ (2008), sticks fairly closely to the original by KANESHIRO Muneyuki 金城宗幸 and FUJIMURA Akeji 藤村緋二. But as death-game movies go, Gods is only moderately inventive, with none of the technically complex countdown-puzzles of, say, the South Korean Death Bell 고死　피의 중간고사 (2008). The games are structured more to set the participants against each other but, given the fact they're basically cut-outs and the dialogue is on the level of "where are we?" and "how do we solve this?", there's little human drama. The film starts in the middle of the first game, with only a sliver of backgrounding in a couple of flashbacks.

Instead, the film's defining wrinkle is the use of dolls as the game-masters — a red-faced daruma 達磨 doll, a group of kokeshi dolls, and even Russian Dolls, as well as a giant Beckoning Cat and polar bear. With the slick VFX effects not only animating their faces in a characterful way but also integrating them seamlessly into the live action, the movie has a lot of ironic fun in making these into death-dealing nasties, as well as reversing their traditional lucky or cuddly roles.

The daruma, spitting bile and blood-coloured marbles before detonating students' heads, and the giant cat, getting its back scratched before it eats pupils, are the best in this respect. Least interesting is the polar bear (animated in a deliberately jerky way), and by the time the film gets to him it's already showing signs of running lower on invention. A parallel story which seems to be developing back on the ground — and somehow involving actors Lily FRANKY リリー・フランキー and OMORI Nao 大森南朋, who appear in brief cameos — gradually comes more to the fore, as the students seem to be trapped inside a giant alien cube that hovers above Tokyo. The film's cliffhanger ending may or may not be resolved by a sequel, though the second volume of the original manga goes off in a different direction with new characters.

The youthful protagonists play second fiddle to the dolls, as far as characterisation is concerned. As the main hero who solves all the puzzles, FUKUSHI Sota 福士蒼汰, a graduate of the Kamen Rider 仮面ライダー films, is marginally more interesting than most of his boyish ilk, but is knocked into the shade by KAMIKI Ryunosuke 神木隆之介 (the film nerd in The Kirishima Thing 桐島、部活やめるってよ (2012), the smiling psycho in Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno るろうに剣心　京都大火編) who's most memorable as the fellow-student who just likes beating up and killing his classmates. Female roles are largely decorative, with YUKI Mio 優希美青 (the high-school student in Yakuza Apocalypse) as a lovelorn colleague the hero once saved from suicide and YAMAZAKI Hirona 山崎紘菜 more proactive as the hero's amorata. The only substantial actor among the younger cast, SOMETANI Shota 染谷将太 (Himizu ヒミズ (2011), Lesson of the Evil, Parasyte: Part 1 寄生獣) pops up at the start as a computer-game geek.

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