Pro tip: don't look at the MDL cast section.

Welcome to the Strange Circus, where nothing is as it seems to be...

The first quarter of the film portrays the visually disturbing sexual abuse of a school principle of his wife Sayuri and eventually her daughter Mitsuko too. Everything—starting from the school halls to the manor, transforms in its appearance and becomes horrendously red and bloodied or white emptiness as we start seeing the world from Mitsuko’s perspective.

At this point, while I’m wondering how long the movie will stretch this storyline, Sono Sion makes this strange circus stranger as we now realise that this is an erotic novel written by a female author Takeo, being read out by the editors. Amongst the editors is the young assistant Yuji.

As the plot goes on, Sono Sion makes it even more bizarre and everything becomes a lie.

“Strange Circus” was all over the genres. It was at times a mere psychological thriller, then a complex mystery and later, a melodramatic revenge plot. This is perhaps testimony to the brilliant complex layers that Sono Sion has skillfully crafted. As one perplexing twist occurs one after the other, much akin to an acrobat in a circus, do we realise how truly complex this maze is.

Quite worth the watch but recommended only to those who can stomach the grotesqueness.