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.
