IMDb plot summary: A yakuza enforcer is ordered to secretly drive his beloved colleague to be assassinated. But when the colleague unceremoniously disappears en route, the trip that follows is a twisted, surreal and horrifying experience.
Directed by Takashi Miike. Starring Yûta Sone, Shô Aikawa, Kimika Yoshino, and Shôhei Hino.
(Mild spoilers.)
This was the weirdest way to kick off my new movie challenge. This movie is BONKERS, but I probably should have expected that from what I know of Takashi Miike as a director (this is my first time watching one of his films). It starts off relatively normal, a paranoid thriller about someone who (maybe on purpose? Maybe by accident? I thought on purpose, but reviewer synopses don't seem to be clear on it) kills someone and then feels paranoid when the body disappears. But then it just gets weirder and weirder, in almost a nightmarish David Lynch kind of way. There's really not as much *gore* as I expected going into it, but so many of the images are unsettling and disturbing. The final scene is the most explicit visually and the most terrifying, and probably my personal favorite, as it was one of the few scenes that I felt had an emotional point to it. A lot of the movie seemed to be weird or gross with no purpose, but that final scene made sense and fit together... at least until the very final seconds, where the abrupt shift in tone seemed to undo all of it.
1.5 stars but I'm not sure how to really assign a star rating to this.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Gozu < Days of Heaven (1978)
Gozu > Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Gozu < Liz & Dick (2012)
Gozu < The Sword in the Stone (1963)
Gozu < The Children's Hour (1961)
Gozu > Empire of the Sun (1987)
Gozu < The Fugitive (1993)
Gozu > Nick Nolte: No Exit (2008)
Gozu < A Farewell to Fools (2013)
Gozu < Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (1944)
Gozu < The Hiding Place (1975)
Gozu > Madagascar (2005)
Final spot: #1819 out of 2491.
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