User reviews

First of all, I looked at another comment by someone named rrobins2-1, who said that this movie is "not for the Japanese ignorant," that it has a lot to do with Buddhism and Shintoism, and that it's perfectly understandable from a Japanese point of view.

Mr. rrobins2-1 obviously doesn't know what he's talking about. I have lived in Japan, I speak the language, and I know that his comments are ignorant, which is ironic because that's what he claims others are. First of all, many Japanese people don't follow any religion, nor do they know a great deal about them. Second, every Japanese person I spoke to said the same thing about the movie: "I didn't understand it." So much for that perfectly understanding Japanese point of view. Anyway, now that that's finished, on to the review:

The beginning parts of the movie show a lot of promise. Teenagers are killing themselves, and being happy about it to boot. The police are looking into it, believing that it's more of a murder, and someone is causing it. Throughout the movie, you see their futility in trying to figure things out, and the scenes that feature mass suicide are very intense and well-done, but there ends up being so many different things in the movie that don't amount to anything, and their is no real conclusion to the film.

First off, there's a girl who informs the police of a website that's connected to the suicide. She attempts to find out the cause of the deaths. It seems that she would be an important character, but she's not in very much, and she doesn't do anything. This goes with all the characters. There are many characters in the movie, but none of them are developed, and many times you're left wondering why they're in the movie to begin with. There's a weird Rocky Horror-esquire musical performance about halfway through the movie, which many people believe is way out of character for the rest of the movie. Anway, I don't want to spoil anything, so I will just say that the story doesn't end, and with the way things stand at the end of the movie, it's impossible to understand how these people were convinced to kill themselves the way they were.

Going through all the stuff in the movie quickly: There's the mass suicides, Cops that are out of touch, a giant roll of stitched together human flesh of the people who have or will commit suicide, a weird j-pop band who's name is misspelled numerous times throughout the movie, the weird, gay cultist who sings wants to be famous, coughing children who know everything about the situation and give cryptic clues about it. All of these, as well as the stuff I neglected to mention, either come out of the blue, or are barely in the picture (or both), with no explanation (and almost no clues), leading you to wonder what they are doing in the first place. I know it's supposed to be a satire, but if half the people who watch it don't understand it, how are you supposed to get your message across?

Shinjuku Station in the evening rush hour. High school girls throng the packed platform, dominating with their raucous chatter, jangling bags and provocatively short skirts. As the commuter rapid approaches, something bizarre happens - 54 girls join hands and step reverentially on the platform edge. Given the title of the film, it is no big stretch to guess what happens next.

A veteran detective (Ryo Ishibashi) and jaded younger colleague (Masatoshi Nagase) suspect a grand plot, but are thwarted in their attempts to investigate by weary seniors. Clues are supplied by The Bat, a more web-savvy mysterious informant. Can the detectives uncover the conspiracy and prevent more suicides? That is as much narrative analysis as the story can bear, as it veers off course in the second half into surrealism, MTV theatricals, and heavy-handed symbolism. "There is no suicide club" declares a juvenile voice on the phone, continually clearing its throat. Whether there is or isn't is a question never fully resolved.

Don't be taken in by reviewers who tell you that you have to be Japanese to understand this film - my Japanese students and friends are as baffled by the story as anyone else. Sion's film never quite lives up to that opening sequence in Shinjuku Station, but it compels you to go with it to the end, and provides a few thrills along the way. It is a shame it does not all quite pull together. But there are enough digs at Japan's shallow celebrity culture, crippling generation gap, obsessive consumerism, and indeed freakishly high suicide rate to make this worth watching.

In short, great visuals, shame about the script.

A user on this board commented that much of this film is lost in translation. This is true. From what I've seen, the overwhelming majority of users on this board are either American or European. Also, the majority of the reviews of this film are negative, and the only explanation from these negative reviews are that the film "doesn't make sense" or lacks a "solid plot."

LOL

Of course it doesn't make sense to you. You're watching it as an American. You cannot watch this film with an American lens. You're right - it doesn't make sense. But if you watch this film with a Japanese lens it makes PERFECT sense.

First, you cannot watch this film within a Christian/existential context. You must watch it from a Buddhist/Shinto perspective. This is the predominant religion in Japan.

Watching this as a Shinto/Buddhist you'll find that a lot of the images take on new meaning. Shinto is an animist religion that WORSHIPS NATURE - pay attention to the animal symbols that repeatedly crop up in the film (did you wonder why there are baby chicks running rampant during that creepy "shaving" scene?). Also, pay attention to the colors. Yellow means something much different to the Japanese than it does to Westerners.

Also, Japan has an incredibly powerful youth culture. Western societies, especially the United States, tend to dismiss youth as a time of decadence, immorality, and lack of direction. The Japanese hold their youth in reverence - they believe it's an incredibly precious time of life. In fact, just as the US has "mother's day" and "father's day," the Japanese have "children's day!" This movie is making a statement about childhood and the value of childhood.

And, last but not least - reincarnation. Reincarnation is accepted as a fact of life in Japan. Keep that in mind when the kids from the Dessart Group are talking all "cryptic" and "nonsensical." ^_^

I won't go into detail on what sort of meaning the film takes within the native Japanese framework. I will tell you this, though: the plot IS coherent from start to finish. There aren't any "plot holes." No more so than you'll find in the greats of American cinema, such as "Citizen Kane" or "Pulp Fiction."

With these things in mind, "Suicide Club" is not as enigmatic as it might seem. Of course, this information doesn't dismiss the other complaints: gratuitous violence and the J-pop performances.... Which, I'd argue, are just more American-biased complaints.

Sayonara! Randy

This weird low budget Japanese film asks, Are you connected to yourself? To understand the concept of this movie you have to understand Japanese culture a bit. In Japan, everything is much more group related and being solo means you're likely to be cast aside. The story starts with a memorable scene in which over fifty high school students jump to their deaths in front of an oncoming train. A series of suicides follows which baffles investigators. I won't say much more on the story in risk of giving anything away. Reportedly shot for around $250,000 on 35mm is impressive and certain scenes were shot without formal permission. Ironically, the train station at the opening of the film where teenagers die has had some real life suicides associated with it. Spooky. The film isn't perfect and it's a bit hard to keep track of certain characters sometimes but the overall effect is pretty powerful. It did stir up some emotion in me. Check it out!

A grim vision of the future of the internet, manifested. But, as a Sion Sono film, is still very weird and out-there. What's with the musical number from the blonde weirdo Genesis?

Everybody is being influenced by some website and because of some rumors. It's fomo combined with teenage anxiety and impressionability. But at the same time, when suicides come in such big numbers, all at the same time, is the exterior influence actually the murderer? I know there is real pressure in Japan to succeed. That drives people to make harsh decisions regarding their life. Burnout is a big thing in Japan. Or was, not updated enough on that situation.

I think Sono wanted to raise awareness.

When I'm writing this, I still feel a bit confused about the flick. Checking out the IMDb message board was of very little help, as it seems most of us feel equally confused when the credit rolls.

The flick features another appearance of Ryo Ishibashi (who played Aoyama in Takashi Miike's international breakthrough, Ôdishon), who is a great actor indeed. Even though his role in Jisatsu Saakuru is a bit laid back compared to the one of his in Ôdishon, I can't help to take notice of him and there's just something about him and his charisma that I like.

Furthermore, the plot is the major source of the unavoidable confusion. The flick kicks in with a mass suicide committed by a group of young schoolgirls, who decides to jump and kiss the rail in front of the moving train. While the police investigates the matter, more suicides are being committed. One cannot recognize if the director, Sion Sono, is a mastermind or simply had a hard time making the plot coherent, since it is at times a bit difficult to draw the connections. The latter phenomenon about drawing connections in the story is something that one could perceive as something entirely up to the flicks viewer, as fairly little is revealed by the director.

Anyhow, it's well worth a shot and I'm looking forward to see more flicks by Sono.

A suicide epidemic is sweeping Japan, even among hordes of teenaged girls who are making pacts with each other and offing themselves together. As Detective Kuroda (Ryo Ishibashi) and crew investigate, they begin to suspect that maybe there's more to it than simple suicide.

In terms of sheer spectacle, surrealism and the impact of its scenes, Suicide Club is simply an amazing, groundbreaking film. As for "what it really means" (assuming we could even agree on how that could be determined), it is wide open for interpretation. Everyone is likely to have their own, and not a few will probably insist that their interpretation is the "right" one. I don't think mine is the "right" one--I don't even agree that there would be a "right" interpretation. But at any rate, my current take on the film is that it is an extremely twisted, broad-ranging exegesis on many facets of Japanese culture (and to an extent, it can be applied to other cultures, as well) that is issuing sharp criticism at the same time that it is showing reason for hope.

Suicide Club is a very dense film. By that I mean that it is packed full of meaning, symbolism, references and such. An analysis of each scene would be interesting and informative, but it would take far more than 1000 words (the space IMDb allows). At the same time that much of it may be intentionally cryptic, designed to open up the interpretational field, I think that much of the film is more transparent than its often David Lynch-like surrealism would suggest.

For example, in the late 20th/Early 21st Century, and especially in 2001, the year before Suicide Club was released, a big news story in Japan (and elsewhere, including BBC and CNN reports) was their relatively high suicide rate. 33,000 Japanese had killed themselves in 2000. The Japanese government's Ministry of Health developed a special program to combat the phenomenon. At the same time, there is a cultural history of suicide being "honorable" in Japan, at least in some contexts, yet contradictorily, suicide has also been looked at as strongly taboo by the Japanese, as something not even to be talked about. Japan is also a culture where a more cyclical view of time and nature is common. The major Japanese religions are Buddhism and Shinto. Many species of Buddhism accept reincarnation, and Shinto has a potential "life after death" as kami. In the midst of all of this, The Perfect Suicide Manual by Wataru Tsurumi was on Japanese bestseller lists for years in the late 1990s. So suicide is certainly a complex, pressing issue in Japan.

Writer/director Shion Sono offers his own thesis for the root of the problem, on the way providing a strong cultural critique of Japan (and by conceptual association, similar cultures in other industrialized nations). The criticism is perhaps surprisingly conservative in light of the graphic bloodiness of the film's images, but we could see Suicide Club's brutality as partially an embrace of reality versus sweeping the truth under the rug, and partially a Natural Born Killers (1994)-styled self-indictment of the media age's contributions to the problem.

A major theme is "disconnect". Many are wrapped up in their work, in gadgetry and other pursuits so that they lose their connections to their families and even themselves as authentic human beings. It is significant that Sono shows many suicide victims with interlocked hands, achieving a kind of emotional/spiritual/"kamic" unity before taking the plunge. Another corrupt attempt at achieving the missing connection is realized in long strands of human skin that are bound together and found near some suicide victims. Kuroda, who is investigating the epidemic, is relatively disconnected from his immediate family. They need help, but he only notices when it's too late.

Pop culture is initially portrayed as shallow or decadent. Near the beginning of the film, the young girl pop group has a big hit with a vacuous song about e-mailing or calling them. (Did I hear someone mention "Kim Possible" (2002)?) The name of the group is alternatively written in English (via posters, video and the subtitles) as "Dessert" (sweet and appealing, but bad for you if overindulged and consisting of "empty" nutrition), "Desert" (a seemingly barren wasteland, or an abandoning) or "Dessart" ("Dessert" + "Art"). Near the middle of the film, A Ziggy Stardust-styled glam-punk is shown depravedly indulging in sex and violence--an even more extreme version of Malcolm McDowell's Alexander de Large from A Clockwork Orange (1971). Later he becomes a self-styled Charles Mansion-ish celebrity, and he is blamed for having a connection to the suicides, in a typical media/pop culture scapegoating. At one point, the suicides evolve from their initial spirit of a unifying pact to a fad to be indiscriminately mimicked, whether one does it alone or not. It seems that in such an environment, even suicide is not immune from corruption.

The film only begins to reach a resolution once characters are lectured on their unwitting alienation/inauthenticity/dissociation from their core values. Children, either as perceptive innocents or wise reincarnates are the primary instruments of this reeducation. Even "Desert" contributes, as they sing a song about piecing together jigsaw puzzles. Later, when they decide to literally desert their pop stardom, they do so with a farewell song that's no longer shallow, but full of poignancy and hope. (By the way, all of the music in the film is excellent--I would love to see a CD soundtrack released.) This is a rare film that might be difficult to enjoy without a taste for this kind of deeper analysis, but there are plenty of visceral and surreal delights for horror fans. Those with weaker constitutions may have difficulty stomaching this material, but Suicide Club is an absolutely brilliant film--all of the technical and artistic aspects are exemplary. This is one of the best films of the 2000s.

The opening scene proved this film is going to be easy to digest, it is telling you that this film is going to challenge you, provoke you and disgust you! If you are not prepared, please don't watch this film.

The unique aspect of this film is that it doesn't have a specific protagonist, at least not in the traditional manner. This is likely to be one of the reason why some people find this film rather confusing. However, I think it worked well in terms of presenting the film in a wider aspect, showing us what suicide means in different situations, scenario, relationships, but what is more important, is what it means to you.

"What is your connection to you?"

The real horror from this film comes from the inside, inside the audience's mind, which is what real horror is about. The film explores a lot of theme, but what created the horror was the depiction of humanity. It shows how we are so numb because of how society programmed us, do we even know ourselves? We are also drawn to this fake hope, when you discover that you know nothing about yourself, that is when the real despair and horror comes.

This film is not perfect, but more importantly, the idea came across, it transferred the really strong sensations and this is what art is about.

'Suicide Club' starts out with quite the opening scene. It's dark, unique, shocking and mysterious. At that point there was hope for the film. Sadly, that was going to be the highlight and it was all downhill from there.

This was a weird one. I really don't know what they were going for. I've never seen so much blood used in individuals scenes. It was comical. It was almost like a reminder to say, just in case you forgot this is a movie here is a ridiculous quantity of blood which looks nothing like actual blood.

There's a concept here that I could see working if done differently. Mass random suicides under mysterious circumstances could certainly work for a horror film. But in this case everyone was so happy during the suicide scenes that there was no tension or dread at all.

This one didn't work for me. It's not one I'd recommend. 4/10.

Suicide Club is a typically energetic and hyper quirky cinematic treat from Japan. What you may need to know to really enjoy this happy hell-ride is that for 'director' read 'performance artist'. Director, Shion Sono is better known as the man behind many a controversial and largely impromptu public performances 'sans camera'. The other thing you may need to know is that the train station featured at the beginning of the film was notorious for suicides. So much so that Japanese officials allowed a special 'suicide tax' to be levied on the families of those people committing suicide at this station (and others like it) to deter disillusioned salarymen from continuing create train delays.

According to Sono, he shot alot of the scene as he would direct as performance pieces. Without formal permission, he grabbed his actors and had them pile into the station and do their thing. I doubt there are many 'Hollywood' that would even contemplate such a risk, let alone pull it off with such energy and vision. This type of Japanese cinema is a bittersweet candy bar. Dont try and savour it, just enjoy the rush cause you may start to feel and little sick at some point soon.

Suicide Club managed to create a cult reputation during its years of release, establishing itself as a rather special film in the genre and evocative, full of disturbing moments and a story that, despite being confusing, creates a palpable sense of mystery and an unsettling atmosphere.

The film has an interesting story, if somewhat nonsensical at times, but shows high doses of mystery combined with a deep symbolism that adheres to Japanese culture, combining popular narratives and making use of tropes that were common during the 90s and early 2000s of Japanese cinema, especially the use of supernatural plots combined with technology. On the other hand, the story at times falls under its own weight and becomes too complex, in the sense that it doesn't seem to get anywhere. I think that rather than offering a traditional story, this is a collection of ideas that seeks to narrate something without the need to focus on the classic development of a movie, creating surreal and violent scenes with a strong focus on death.

Suicide Club was much better than I expected. I thought it would be a simple gore movie with a mystery, but it manages to combine a handful of unique and distinguishable elements that give it a quite terrifying and unique personality. Add to that good performances and a solid cast, plus strong cinematography, and we have a solid horror film with a deep context. Recommended.

The film starts with 54 schoolgirls happily counting to 3 and jumping in front of a subway train. Skulls crushed by train wheels and blood spattered over the other people on the platform, the train having difficulty breaking due to human fat on the tracks, etc, in the background a carnival happy musical background. Yeah, it's that kind of film. However, the film has a lot of subtlety and metaphorical messages throughout. So, no, it's not a j-horror thing, but a very shocking Japanese film, with a moral at the end.

Back to the story, there are a lot more people just happily killing themselves. The police are stumped and, up to that moment, it all seemed a lot like The Happening, without some heroic dude as the main character. The ending disappointed me, though. I understood the whole idea of the film, which I don't intend to spoil here, but frankly the feel at the end was a huge WTF. Also the main culprits looked ridiculous. All revolutionaries have a really funny look, but this was going over the top. Indeed, the entire movie was.

Bottom line: Still better than The Happening, even if made with a fraction of its budget, it gives you the same kind of confusing feeling at the end. I always hold that a movie is not very good if at the end you have to google what the hell it meant. This is one of those movies I have been a bit too stupid to fully understand. So, maybe it's me, but maybe it's the movie.

This is an odd little movie that I could not stop watching. Though I will not likely see it again, I would recommend seeing it once. The violence is cartoonish at best, blood splattered everywhere, but the story of a wave of suicides is enough to keep your interest. If you have a somewhat dark sense of humor you will like this film.

I really like 'Suicide Club'. This is a movie that manage to be sometimes scary, and from start to end pretty unpredictable & nerve wrecking. This is not achieved through the basic horror/ thriller formula but rather by using this format in a very personal and original way. Instead of using some crazy person or a monster as a killer with a defined purpose, director Sion Sono puts his characters (and us as viewers) face to face with death more as it actually is: something we all carry with us, but nobody can understand and nobody can escape. So as the story begins, the police that try to investigate the sudden occurrence of mass youth suicide can't rely on previous experiences. How do you stop violent death when the killer actually is inside the mind of the victims? And if you don't know how or why this happens, can you even protect yourself? This is in many ways a much more fascinating & disturbing concept than the extremely over-exploited serial killer running around with a knife/gun/axe or whatever.

In conjunction with the suspense there's some quite poetic parts which touches on the everlasting question: if you can't find a reason behind death, can you really find any reason to live? In this hi-tech, constant mass communication world maybe a lot of us are spending our time trying to escape from such profound questions by engaging in mindless distractions & superficial relations, never contemplating that these actions might be just as empty & worthless as a non-existence. One notion that the movie conveys is that since death is the only inescapable thing inside all of us, we won't find the true core of life anywhere else. We have to search deep within ourselves.

I rate 'Suicide Club' 8/10. For me it was both entertaining & thought provoking.

SUICIDE CLUB works better as a thematic piece exploring conformity and suicide in Japan than a proper thriller, despite attempts to graft a traditional detective story to the wafer thin plot. It's a lot less coherent than the other Sion Sono movie I've seen, EXTE, which was a lively twist on the classic Japanese ghost story, whereas this is a unique and occasionally unfathomable beast.

Basically, the story is about mass suicides taking place in Japan, usually carried out by gangs of high school girls. There are a handful of very shocking moments in the movie, most notably the opening train station sequence, which are hard to get out of the mind once seen. Plus, a later moment in a kitchen of all places is one of the grimmest and most unpleasant I remember seeing in a movie.

Elsewhere, we get Ryo Ishibashi (AUDITION) playing a cop investigating the deaths, although this sub-plot doesn't really get very far. Instead SUICIDE CLUB sometimes feels like a jumble of abstract ideas, throwing in references to AUDITION, J-pop, social alienation, and family dynamics. The main story finishes around the hour mark and the film just sort of dawdles along aimlessly for another half an hour after that point. It does contain some remarkable and harrowing imagery, so I didn't dislike it, but I just wish it had been less abstract and more concrete.

It's actually rather hard to understand "Suicide Club" in part because there's no real reason for what happens in it. There's no real conclusion or solution to it and nothing is solved. And part of that is because we're seeing it through Western eyes.

Japan is... odd. Not in a bad way but in a way that we can see how a culture different to our own has evolved. One that even myself, who lived there for 10 years, still doesn't quite understand. You really need to live there and grow up in that society to begin to get what is going on in this movie.

The movie opens on a train station in Tokyo where a group of high school girls have gathered. At the right time they all hold hands and as one jump onto the tracks as the express train rolls by. This is of course national news and the police are called in to investigate. There they discover a bag with a roll of human skin stitched together. It's determined that this came from the girls. Each one, for some unknown reason, had a strip of skin removed and stitched together into a large roll. The next day a group of students eating lunch on the rooftop of their school jump to their deaths. The day after that suicides are starting to pop up all over Japan all seemingly tied into the same thing.

As the police investigate, more suicides occur and it's becoming a bit of an epidemic. There's seemingly ties to a visual kei musical group and a young idol group called "Dessert". In this it mimics a series of suicides that occurred after people listened to the song "Gloomy Sunday" by Billie Holiday, a song which is supposedly cursed.

Unfortunately, as stated earlier, there's no solution to why all these people were killing themselves. Some say it's due to the music and how the group Dessert pushed people to do so. At one point somebody notices that on one of their posters each member has certain fingers showing. The numbers, when put onto a phone, spell out "suicide". But there's nothing in their music that seems to lead people to want to kill themselves.

The director, Sion Sono, has stated that this movie is a satire of not only the entertainment industry and how we absorb pop culture. But also it's a commentary on Japanese youth and their willingness to throw themselves into their passions. He's mentioned that maybe he didn't explain this well enough so that non-Japanese people could understand it but does say that the ambiguity of the whole thing is what makes it so compelling.

It's a flawed movie but again maybe that's only because we're not seeing it as he envisioned. Anybody who likes Japanese New Wave cinema needs to give it a watch. It's interesting but it might take a couple viewings for it to make any kind of sense to you.

Pedantic. Sloppy. Melodramatic. Pretentious. Desultory. Ambling. Incoherent. Gratuitous. Childish. Plagiaristic.

Just

Plain

Stupid.

Capitalizing on the success of Battle Royale (2000), mediocre director Sion Sono whipped together a low budget rip off with a not-very-inventive twist. Instead of high school kids killing each other, they're killing themselves!

Having read all the quasi-intellectual reviews here on IMDb, I was looking forward to seeing this movie. With all the supercilious chatter of Japanese culture, Shinto and Buddhism (three subjects which I have studied in-depth), I thought that this would be definitely worthwhile. WRONG. Never have I been so let down. People, PLEEZ, don't build this flick up to be anything more than it is: a cheap splatter flick without much of a theme. Oh sure, it makes several juvenile swats at philosophy. For example, some kid says over and over (5 times, I believe): "If you die, will you be connected with yourself?"

Ah yes, I'm stroking my beard at the profundity of that question. For all of 3 seconds. Now lets get back to the movie and watch a leather-wearing she-male step on puppy dogs' heads whilst singing some inane lyrics to a lame chord progression. (I believe the words he was singing were: "Because the dead... because the dead... because the dead... shine all night long.")

Yes, don't even get me started on how puerile the music was. I can't believe the number of people on IMDb who seem to find some poetic depth in the lyrics. But you be the judge. Here are the lyrics. Tell me if there is anything profound about it (and the movie):

"The world is a jigsaw puzzle The world is a jigsaw puzzle The world is a jigsaw puzzle Somewhere there's a fit for you!"

omg. How Buddhist. How Shinto. You dumb Americans will never understand the depth of our Japanese culture. (/sarcasm)

Folks, if you want real Japanese culture & philosophy, I'd suggest you stick to the classics: Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi, and (if you prefer the more modern stuff) Hideaki Anno, Katsuhito Ishii. Stay away from tripe like SUICIDE CLUB, which is little more than David Lynch on a bad day with a low budget. You've been warned!

Okay, admittedly I have not seen a lot of Japanese films, and maybe it is just from my Western point of view that I cannot understand a single thing this movie is trying to get across. To me, it seemed full of non sequiturs, and lacking in any sort of unified plot direction and character development.

I came out of this movie almost willing to throw myself in front of a subway. I do not expect every movie to have a standard, linear plot. In fact, I especially enjoy those movies which relate a story in a new fashion, using new techniques and interesting visuals. Maybe I missed the point, but at the end of the movie, not one of the questions has an answer to be found.

Who is really behind the "Club," if it's the random glam rock guy, then why do the suicides continue, who the hell are half of the people that show up in the last half of the movie, what is Dessart's involvement, what is the meaning of the phone calls, etc etc etc.

From my perspective, the filmmakers were going for a sort of Lynchian motif of a puzzle to be placed together by disjointed images and dialogue--which I am completely interested in. The result, however, seems full of holes and hot air. If anyone can tell me why I should like this movie, I'll be happy to watch it again with an open mind.