Weird but interesting story - brings together several genres such as the closed room whodunnit of crime fiction, hard edged rebarbative sci-fi/horror and - through its school student setting - dystopian works of children's atavistic reversion to savagery when plucked from normal "civilised" life, such as Golding's Lord of the Flies, Oe's Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids and in cinema Battle Royale. I feel the plot becomes too clever for its own good, the contortions become hard to follow and there's a fair amount of sleight of hand by the time it gets to the end. Still, it makes you think - whether as a dramatic comment on human society or a dramatic projection of human psychological motivations. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it!! Some nice eye candy here anyway, in particular with the sultry good looks of Ota Motahiro (whose photo on the biog page completely fails imho to do him justice compared to the movie!) (Was there any music? I don't see how we can give a required score).
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