Suicide Club (5 Stars)

Time and time again the sky is blue,

And yet it's strange how people seem to always fall in love.

An unfamiliar yellow dog keeps grinning

As it tears us from the ones we love.

Because the dead,

Because the dead,

Because the dead shine all night long.

I want to die as beautifully as Joan of Arc

Inside a Bresson film.

Lesson one, apply the shaving cream and smile

As you slowly slice away the heart

Because the dead,

Because the dead,

Because the dead shine all night long.

Feel the warmth of the spring rain

As it gently moistens down a cheek

That's streaked with dried up tears.

A guileless boy of five years old stares blankly in the face of death

While his heart is cut and torn away.

Because the dead,

Because the dead,

Because the dead shine all night long.

Because the dead,

Because the dead,

Because the dead shine all night long.

Few films have ever announced themselves with such breath-taking audacity. "Suicide Club" opens with one of the most infamous scenes in horror history, as fifty-four smiling schoolgirls calmly join hands and throw themselves beneath an oncoming train. The resulting carnage is so extreme that it's almost surreal, immediately signalling that Sion Sono has no interest in making a conventional thriller.

As mass suicides sweep across Japan, weary detective Kuroda struggles to uncover the truth. Every lead only deepens the mystery. A bizarre website appears to predict the growing death toll, grotesque rolls of stitched human skin arrive at police stations and the relentlessly upbeat J-Pop group Dessert seems to cast an eerie shadow over every tragedy. Meanwhile, the flamboyant psychopath Genesis, played with unforgettable manic energy by Rolly, taunts the investigation while hinting that something far larger is unfolding.

Is Dessert secretly manipulating its fans through coded messages hidden in its posters and songs? Is there a suicide cult operating in the shadows? Or has modern society become so emotionally hollow that people no longer need anyone to persuade them to die? Sono deliberately refuses to provide simple answers, leaving viewers to wrestle with one haunting question: "Are you connected to yourself?"

Beneath the shocking violence lies a savage satire of celebrity culture, media obsession and the loneliness lurking beneath modern life. The unforgettable final concert by Dessert offers no comforting explanation, only the chilling suggestion that the machinery of pop culture will continue smiling long after the bodies have been cleared away.

Violent, provocative and deeply unsettling, Suicide Club remains one of the most original cult horror films of the twenty-first century. Its gruesome set pieces may grab your attention, but it's the questions it leaves behind that will haunt you long after the credits roll.