(1992)
Dir - Katsuya Matsumura
Overall: MEH
The first in a series of to date six films and the debut from writer/director Katsuya Matsumura, the initial All Night Long is a deliberately surreal and unsettling work. It is also uncompromisingly nihilistic which would not be the liking of most film-goers. While it is possible that Matsumura was trying to say something profound here about Japan's youth, Generation Xers, or just violence in media as an overall theme, it is a mostly unpleasant and largely laborious ordeal that does the movie too severe of a disservice. The very gradual pace is a nice shift from the usual MTV frantic cutting it easily could have had, but by taking so much time to establish what his movie could possibly even be about, Matsumura goes too far. By the time the really nasty stuff happens, it seems more random than inevitable. With the more torture porn nature then taking over, it leaves the viewer with a lingering, awful feeling and almost the sense of being duped since the long build up merely wielded such a sour experience. This certainly could have been intentional, but it always comes down to the question of how depressing of a movie does one want to sit through in the first place to warrant its existence.
(1995)
Dir - Katsuya Matsumura
Overall: MEH
The second of six installments in Katsuya Matsumura's All Night Long series, (All Night Long 2 a.k.a. Atrocity), continues the filmmaker's fascination with exploring young, suburban teenagers with no adults around who are violently harassed by seemingly the same aged gang members, plus how the tormented inevitably become the tormentors in the end. Once again, what the film could be trying to offer to the rape-revenge sub-genre besides just highly uncomfortable set pieces is anybody's guess. The fact that torture porn has an audience at all in the first place is rather curious, but when it is presented in such meagerly budgeted terms like this where everything is brightly lit and has an at best student film/shot on video quality to it, the appeal is even more baffling. As far as differences from this and the previous entry, there is no time wasted in getting to the horrible stuff, with the whimpish main character being a sadistic pedophile from frame one. This makes his turn to violence and gleeful abuser more miserably immoral. If that was the goal to push the series into more nasty and despicable terrain for the sake of it, it certainly does such a thing. To what end? Well that depends on who wants to watch people get raped, burned alive, and have their genitals mutilated for seventy-seven minutes.
(1996)
Dir - Katsuya Matsumura
Overall: MEH
Narratively speaking, the third All Night Long film, (erroneously dubbed The Final Atrocity even though three more sequels have to date followed), goes a comparatively different path then once again watching a puny loser get bullied to the point of snapping on his torturers. It is still the usual miserable, vile ordeal though where youths run completely amok and pretty much everyone is as awful as inhumanly possible. For his role as the highly disturbed, isolated teenager whose fascination with garbage, bugs, and women's menstrual cycles goes into the violent avenues that one would predict, Yûjin Kitagawa is highly effective on screen. By slowly limping around with a hunched posture that would make Mr. Burns' back look erect, he is the perfect physical embodiment of Katsuya Matsumura's emotionless, lonely, confused, and troubled adolescent whose lack of all adult supervision and guidance has let him gradually excel in the bubbling, human suffering breeding ground that is modern Japan. It is still a matter of how unenjoyable of a film Matsumura has concocted though. The rape and murder is as unflinching as ever, (plus we have women getting fed maggots, getting pissed on, and suffocated with their own bloody maxi pads), so for all of the director's nihilistic intentions, this should still be a hard pass for almost any viewer out there.
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