2000's Asian Horror Part Twenty-One - (Shinya Tsukamoto Editon)

A SNAKE OF JUNE

(2002)
Overall: MEH

A typically stylistic yet exhaustively one-note indulgence in strangeness from filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, A Snake of June, (Rokugatsu no hebi), has an erotic agenda that is meant to upheave domestic complacency when it comes to the bedroom. Presented in blue monochrome and done in the director's usual jittery, shaky-cam, montage style, it concerns a mild-mannered suicide hotline worker in an agreeable yet passionless marriage who undergoes a sexual awakening after one of her previous call-ins blackmails her. Kinky without being disturbingly perverse, Asuka Kurosawa's protagonist embracing her stalker's demands is more icky than any of the actual acts that he makes her do, which involve wearing a short skirt in public, buying a dildo, using it in a restroom, and eventually posing in a horny haze with her clothes off in the rain. The first two acts are comparatively more straightforward in Kurosawa's naughty arc, but the last several minutes switch to her husband and the perpetrator of her newfound horniness, resulting in a confused mess that loses its steamy steam and comes off as just weird for the sake of being weird.

 

NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE
(2006)
Overall: MEH

 

Another unflinching work from filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, Nightmare Detective, (Akumu Tantei), has an inventive enough premise to be of interest, yet it is ruined by some atrociously aggressive cinematography that is disorienting even by Tsukamoto's busy standards.  Shot on location in Adachi, Tokyo with a limited budget, (nothing new for Tsukamoto), the director's insistence on utilizing handheld cameras exclusively while frantically crosscutting already haphazardly framed footage in a schizophrenic manner renders large portions of the movie unwatchable.  This includes all of the graphic dream sequences and kill scenes which instead of being viscerally disturbing, end up as a frustratingly mess that become a chore to sit through.  The movie is also sluggish in its nihilistic monotony, with all of the main characters stuck in a dreary, zero-energy, suicidal daze that fuels the mysterious coma patient, (played by Tsukamoto himself), who murders people in the dreams after they dial his cell phone number.  Not that the unsettling material would have benefited completely from a more conventional approach, but fusing cinéma vérité aesthetics with surreal brutality simply works against the final product in this case.

 

NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE 2

(2008)

Overall: GOOD

 

A stand-alone sequel to his 2006 thriller Nightmare Detective, Shinya Tsukamoto's apply-titled Nightmare Detective 2, (Akumu Tantei 2), goes in an interestingly singular route from its predecessor.  Not at all the police procedural/serial killer manhunt that the first movie was, this one finds Ryuhei Matsuda's endlessly mopey title character in an unshakable bout of despair as he spends his days plagued by his own troubled backstory while wallowing on the floor of his old house.  A prequel of sorts then, Tsukamoto and Hisakatsu Kuroki's script delves into what has made Matsuda's protagonist the mysterious anti-hero that he is, doing so in a challenging way that gradually morphs with the side plot of a teenage girl who is suffering from a more bog-standard vengeful spirit situation.  Though it is still shot in indecipherable, shaky-hand close-ups at times, such moments are gratefully far less frequent than in its predecessor, with a strong emphasis on horrific and surreal set pieces taking center stage.  Best of all, the climax is powerfully barren and more like a devastating outpouring of grief than a refreshing break from the array of supernatural events that came before it.  Tsukamoto says more within these calm, final moments than he does with the ninety-plus minutes that came before it, yet thankfully those ninety-plus minutes are still enticing in their disturbed ambiguity.

TETSUO: THE BULLET MAN

(2009)

Overall: MEH

Boasting another aggressive overload of painful cinematography and editing, Shinya Tsukamoto's third entry in his Tesuo series Testuo: The Bullet Man steps the furthest away from the initial cyberpunk nightmare that kicked everything off.  Shot in English and following some semblance of a conventional be it messy narrative, it further differentiates itself from its predecessors by providing an explanation as to this particular man's transformation into machine with a corporate government backdrop.  This turns the whole thing into an action movie of sorts instead of a surreal, body horror fever dream as had been previously established, which may not satisfy the tastes of those who championed Testuo: The Iron Man or, (to a lesser extent), Testuo II : Body Hammer.  Performance wise, this is a weak offering, partly due to several of the actors not speaking in their native tongue, but even the Caucasian ones seem wooden and aloof at times.  If one was to look at individual stills from the finished product, it would appear to have some nasty visual flare, but when viewed as the actual motion picture that it is, good luck trying to decipher anything that you are seeing on screen during the jacked-up action and transformation sequences.  With a bombardment of lighting-fast editing and shots that looks as if whoever was holding the camera was in the middle of a mosh pit, it makes for an impenetrable viewing experience to say the least.