Suicide Club, part of Sion Sono’s trilogy–including Noriko’s Dinner Table and as yet unnamed finale–is a scathing piece of satirical black humor in the vein of Mary Harron’s American Psycho which focuses upon the effects of pop music upon humanity’s youth. An otherwise simplistic premise is aptly explored as Sono permits Tokyo’s populace to integrate the epidemic as the masses unnecessarily exacerbate matters, thus permitting the death rate to continue by placing the police further from the responsible party. In short, Suicide Club culminates into a Swiftian punch to the face of the aesthetic nay-sayers, taking their exaggerated claims about society, which in their approximation already lies on the brink of apocalypse, to its logical conclusion.
On May 26, when fifty-four high school girls simultaneously jump in front of a Tokyo subway train, it leaves Detective Kuroda (Ryo Ishibashi) and his police force baffled, unsure whether the ongoing suicides–mass as well as singular–are to be considered a criminal action, the influence of a cult, or a mere fad, much like the pop phenomenon Desert, which is currently flooding the Japanese airwaves. To complicate matters, an anonymous caller, which goes by the alias “The Bat” (Yoko Kamon), is leaving cryptic messages with Kuroda after disclosing a website which predicts the deaths moments before they occur.
Suicide Club was released two decades too late. During the 1980’s, parents freely yanked the magnetic tape from cassette reels and burned and smashed records of heavy metal bands in hopes of protecting their teens from subliminal messages. Yet the irony stands that 1) heavy metal groups aren’t exactly known for their creativity and much less for their philosophical drive to do anything more than sell records and allocate a many mullet-loving groupies as possible and 2) to effectively manipulate an audience, the act must be conducted in the most discreet, unassuming manner in the least likeliest of places and mediums. That said, if one really wanted to pull a fast one on today’s youth, what better place than to insert subliminal messaging into a teenie-bopper group’s advertising? Who would have suspected the New Kids on the Block, Hanson, or Another Bad Creation to have an agenda outside of making music that would carve its way into the public’s consciousness which would sit in a perpetual state of deterioration, wasting otherwise valuable space, in the brain’s of its listeners for decades afterward?
This is the premise behind Sono’s razor-sharp satire, Suicide Club. However, he refuses to allow his plot to be a straightforward mystery that conveniently and conclusively leads to a group of twelve year-old demon spawn. Instead, we are first witness to a group of fifty-four teenage girls committing mass suicide during the opening credits. As the film progresses, children continue to die off yet we are unable to determine, much like the police, if the ongoing deaths are linked, merely coincidental, or copycat crimes. What’s more, Sono turns the thumbscrews by offering us a faux resolution which is, in many respects, the masterstroke of the film in that it is the consequence of social influence which brings us, as well as the police, to the premature ending (the “responsible” party’s name in this regard is all the more mocking to the viewer, thus convoluting the satire to a degree bordering on Swiftian). Did I fail to mention that Sono tosses in the Internet and cell phones as a source of the social menace for timely good measure?
To add insult to social commentary injury, understandably and expectantly, Sono inserts a large helping of pitch black, yet very somber, humor into his already gallows-laden storyline. For example, one desperate jumper, Masa (Noriyoshi Shioya), accidentally “drops in” on his girlfriend, Mitsuko (Saya Hagiwara), from on high before politely apologizing and then passing silently away. Though highly pertinent by the film’s climax and satirical agenda, the pop phenomenon, comprised of pre-teen girls, isn’t even allotted enough relevance to be given a consistent spelling of their name as “Dessart,” “Dessret,” and “Desert” perpetually confuses the viewer. By recommendation of this humble critic’s opinion, this vision of the relevancy we as a society should place on such people is a social attitude which American culture might well adopt into a healthy habit. But then again, there’s reality.
In 1996, Senator Bob Dole openly renounced Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and 2Pac’s All Eyez on Me album without having personally watched the former or listened to the latter. With this in mind, Sion Sono’s Suicide Club is a welcome wake up call to the aesthetically anal-retentive as he takes the delusions of what such conservative social theorists would like us to believe is the omnipotent and omnipresent influence and power of (pop) music, the Internet, and the cell phone to their logical conclusion. What results is an over-the-top, blood-soaked film which leaves the helpless, hopelessly lost masses wondering what went wrong. Of course, the irony in this is that Suicide Club, once it gets a wider audience in America, will undoubtedly be renounced for its potential to negatively influence our youth.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
