Jigoku

Certainly not a film for everyone, 'Jigoku' combines visions of Dante, surreal art, nightmarish tortures, and of course, Japanese camp. Director Nobuo Nakagawa presents it all in a dark, dreamlike way, shocking us (mildly) with the death of characters in the first part of the movie, and ramping this up to really shocking us with his vision of the torments of hell. It's in these that the film is at its best. There are the scenes of gore which may have you cringing, but the truly memorable scenes are those which are artistic, such as the field of hands reaching up out of the ground, and the whirling torment of people circling in a frenzy. In Nakagawa's hell, there is both physical pain and mental anguish, as people endlessly seek loved ones or slog through rivers of pus and waste. Where the film is weaker is in providing reasons for why all of the characters end up in hell in the first place. While the initial setup of a hit and run accident is pretty tight, expanding this to a broader set of characters gets a little contrived. Through it all, the character of the dark and sociopathic friend is played well by Yôichi Numata, who stands out in the cast.