Takashi Miike (director)
Arrow Entertainment (studio)
15 (certificate)
113 minutes (length)
22 June 2015 (released)
19 June 2015
When the Katakuris family take over the running of a guest house in the mountains next door to Mount Fuji, they didn't expect what would happen next. Life was jolly and filled with song, but few patrons and money was short. Then a guest commits suicide and all that was normal becomes crazy. Guests keep dying, bodies keep getting buried, songs get sung and nature decides to spoil it by erupting a volcano on them.
I have to warn anyone who may not know about this film or its massive cult following. It is not the usual film fair that most schlock lovers will want to sit down too on a Saturday night. Far from it in fact. It is an absurdly funny, seriously surreal take on the modern world and its many idiosyncratic ways. It will please film lovers and lovers of strange but worthwhile adventures into a view askew. The world we live in is absolutely bonkers and deserves to be addressed in such a way.The films director is too blame for this magic, Takashi Miike understands how a modern younger and more media astute audience consumes films. He gets that people want to be given more than the standard form and simple situation.
This film is off the scale as far as this total Blitzkrieg of style. We have animation, claymation in fact. That is both weird and wonderfully absurd. It has touches of Lynch and in a good way, not in the way that a young film maker makes a film to be so difficult to read or different, it becomes unpalatable. We have musical aspects that are graceful, funny and just as absurd. They play on the Japanese love of song and the idea of personal transportation via song. We have the odd plots and narrative flows that cover things like suicide, the queen of England and crafted set pieces of utter weirdness like Sound of Music on acid.
This is a masterpiece of the odd, weird and totally strange...if you do not want or get that then do not get this...If you do however...Then enjoy!