Japanese horror is a curious thing, either it's a tale of some begrudged ghost (pardon the pun), an ultra-gore spray fest, or something where women get tied up with ropes and tortured (although these are generally a bit daft and not very shocking from what I've seen).
I had high hopes for The Red Room. I always try to avoid reading too many reviews of "controversial" movies as I want the full on experience for myself, free from someone else's (possibly jaded) input. Sadly though, The Red Room wasn't really very controversial at all.
Filmed on an obvious shoestring budget The Red Room is a big brother type tale of 4 contestants trying to win 10million Yen by surviving allotted trials suggested by the winner of a card game. Three cards have the numbers 1,2,3 and a fourth has a king symbol. The person who draws the king gets to tell two others what task they must undertake. This starts pretty mild and progresses to the slightly more extreme.
The first trial involves 5mins of two girls French kissing (although we later find out one has a penis and is hoping for a complete sex change via the winnings) and It's actually a bit icky, not so much due to the visuals, but the sloppy sound effects they've added to the scene. Actually almost all the trials are the same with yucky sound effects, they're kinda funny (especially later on) but I suppose they are effective in ramping up the horror.
The second trial is a girl on a spinning office chair (who pukes at the end), followed by a hairdryer in the mouth scene, and another scene with a man who must assault his wife via punches, and a concluding rape. It's all done in typical Japanese style with the ripping off of a blouse and some breast abuse which I've seen before in Japanese "torture" flicks.
By the time the film nears its end, we've been treated to a rape with a screwdriver, and a broken lightbulb in a vagina (out of shot but complete with squishy noises) concluding with some necrophilia by the girl/boy sex change wannabe of someone who was stabbed with the same screwdriver she had elsewhere earlier. Pleasure and pain eh? All of this sounds really shocking but it really wasn't all that, and I'm hoping to watch Red Room 2 in the next few days in the hope it's better. There's far too much of a sexual element in Red Room when I expected more gore in the games. Maybe that's just me though.
I had high hopes for The Red Room. I always try to avoid reading too many reviews of "controversial" movies as I want the full on experience for myself, free from someone else's (possibly jaded) input. Sadly though, The Red Room wasn't really very controversial at all.
Filmed on an obvious shoestring budget The Red Room is a big brother type tale of 4 contestants trying to win 10million Yen by surviving allotted trials suggested by the winner of a card game. Three cards have the numbers 1,2,3 and a fourth has a king symbol. The person who draws the king gets to tell two others what task they must undertake. This starts pretty mild and progresses to the slightly more extreme.
The first trial involves 5mins of two girls French kissing (although we later find out one has a penis and is hoping for a complete sex change via the winnings) and It's actually a bit icky, not so much due to the visuals, but the sloppy sound effects they've added to the scene. Actually almost all the trials are the same with yucky sound effects, they're kinda funny (especially later on) but I suppose they are effective in ramping up the horror.
The second trial is a girl on a spinning office chair (who pukes at the end), followed by a hairdryer in the mouth scene, and another scene with a man who must assault his wife via punches, and a concluding rape. It's all done in typical Japanese style with the ripping off of a blouse and some breast abuse which I've seen before in Japanese "torture" flicks.
By the time the film nears its end, we've been treated to a rape with a screwdriver, and a broken lightbulb in a vagina (out of shot but complete with squishy noises) concluding with some necrophilia by the girl/boy sex change wannabe of someone who was stabbed with the same screwdriver she had elsewhere earlier. Pleasure and pain eh? All of this sounds really shocking but it really wasn't all that, and I'm hoping to watch Red Room 2 in the next few days in the hope it's better. There's far too much of a sexual element in Red Room when I expected more gore in the games. Maybe that's just me though.