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Katsuya Matsumura
A Japanese director who seems to be very interested in nihilistic, violent youth. He became known through his All Night Long series which explore the effects of violence and various neuroses on meek youth, portraying bleak nihilism, extreme reactions and doomed conclusions on the human psyche. Reviewed until 2016. A slightly more interesting sequel but perhaps the nastiest of the bunch. Another nerd, this one already psychotic, has an unhealthy obsession for stalking girls through their garbage, collecting information from filthy personal trash. One masochistic girl is abused by everyone and the curious nerd joins in on the fun, another one is gang-raped and left in a garbage heap, and is then taken home and coldly played with like another of his trash collectibles. These scenes and more involving perverts, peeping toms, and brutal violence all add up to let us know that humans are just garbage. Bleak and nasty. Yet another gently psychotic teenager sits alone at home, stalking girls through the internet and experimenting with mice and other animals to further his body-part grafting talents. Soon he kidnaps a couple of girls and cuts up one, storing her various body parts, and grafting them onto another. His fantasies and hallucinations get worse, and a stranger who seems to be stalking him complicates matters. Contains nasty gore and cruelty but is relatively more subdued and dreamy than previous outings. This notoriously disturbing true-crime story is right up Matsumura's alley on the theme of ultra-violent youth, made in between his All Night Long releases. This story was covered no less than three times in three Japanese movies and this release is often confused with the exploitative piece of trash porno 'Juvenile Crime' which is also sometimes titled 'Schoolgirl in Cement'. There is also the tamer Concrete. This original remains the most disturbing, however, as it investigates the psychology of the perpetrators, and tries to make the cruel sequence of events extending over a whole month seem more plausible and realistic. The crime involves a group of teenagers with ties to the Yakuza who frequently abduct and exploit girls, one of which regularly beats up and bullies his own mother. This film documents the growing cruelty and torture that they put one girl through, in addition to the endless rapes, until the unusually savage final murder. This first in the notorious trilogy is a very disappointing and pointless effort. Three young guys: a nerd, a spoiled rich man, and a mechanic, witness a violent senseless murder of a girl and become friends. Life starts throwing bad eggs at them, they witness a brute somehow manipulate and use girls yet they can't even get a date, a prostitute abuses and humiliates the rich guy, and finally, a gang rapes and tortures a sweet girl the mechanic just befriended. This pushes them over the edge and they come back for violent revenge, acting as animalistic as everyone else. So the message is that anyone can behave like an animal. Big deal. No interesting insights, not enough shock or action, and sloppy direction and acting. A brutal and nasty sequel, but basically more nihilism showing how anyone (especially the meek) can act like animals. A nerd who likes delicate dolls is bullied and abused by a gang, the homosexual leader of which has a nasty psychological agenda to inflict on him while trying to seduce him into committing perversions and violence. Girls are humiliated until they are reduced to animals, and random acts of violence serve as passing entertainment. When the nerd snaps, things get even nastier. When a woman witnesses a gory accident and gets sexually excited, a man seduces and manipulates her into an S&M relationship. This involves another Dominatrix and slowly gets nastier and more violent until the blood and body parts fly. A different entry in the series that mostly involves S&M activities, snuff and eroticism. Yet another in this never-ending series where the only common thread seems to be a variety of cruel and violent acts performed by youths on other youths for various reasons. For this outing, Matsumura puts together quite a team: Daisuke Yamanouchi for the twisted script, Takashi Shimizu as the producer, and Yoshihiro Nishimura for the couple of gore scenes. However, the result is just a basic but nasty home-invasion movie involving one very disturbed young man with unpredictable motivations, and two sisters. He plays scary and strange psychological games with them, abuses and humiliates them, until the nonsensical gory finale involving many stabbings, some to the crotch, and disemboweling. |
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