As The Gods Will (2014)

A number of students are forced to play a number of deadly games at their school in which their lives are put on the line. The first challenge involves them playing ‘statues’ against a talking Daruma doll. Somebody has to hit the button on the doll’s back to stop a clock which is counting down to zero but it isn’t easy to do because if the doll catches a pupil moving when it turns around to face them their heads explode in a burst of blood and red marbles spill out of every orifice they have. A lone survivor, a teenage boy named Shun Takahata survives the massacre but his nightmare is only beginning. Out in the hallway, he meets a girl he likes called Ichika. Both make their way to the school gymnasium where they see many pupils have dressed up in mouse costumes. All of a sudden, the wooden floor opens up to reveal a giant mechanical talking beckoning cat (maneki-neko) with a spring attached head. The cat attacks and devours those dressed in mouse costumes. Again there is a countdown clock going down to zero and this time the only way to stop the clock is to shoot a basketball shaped bell through a hoop on the cat’s neck. Other challenges include singing kakeshi dolls and Shun facing off against an evil classmate. Will anybody be able to survive the ordeal and why have the students been chosen to play these games?

This was the first movie I watched after coming to Japan in November. With director Takashi Miike you’ve come to expect the unexpected from him and this movie is probably the craziest one he’s ever done. With a bigger budget at his disposal and loads of CG effects, Miike lets his creative juices flow and he doesn’t disappoint. The movie has been adapted from a popular manga. From the get go of the movie, viewers are immersed into a bloodbath situation inside a classroom in which heads explode in a fountain of crimson and it really does hook you in. The violence on show might be gory as hell but it is done in such a cartoonish way that you can’t really take any of it seriously and Miike is certainly having fun with this story. What’s interesting about the surreal childhood playground games that take place is all of them involve something associated with Japanese culture. It’s amusing to see these traditional cultural icons become instruments of death. The maneki-neko has to be the most insane creation I’ve seen in a Japanese movie for a while. The story moves from one lethal game to the next with plenty of long talking sequences inbetween and part of the fun in watching the movie is seeing what Miike will come up with in the next game. A subplot has a massive floating white cube hovering above Tokyo Tower with the games being broadcasted on screens for the general public to see. The school pupils have been chosen as God’s Children to test their survival skills in order to prove that God exists which sparks off street riots and unrest. Do they eventually find that there is a God out there? Well a large wooden evil polar bear and a talking fish are represented as Japanese Gods in the movie.

The story’s protagonist Shun is your typical good looking Japanese teen hero. He may be responsible for putting his classmates through their ordeal due to becoming bored and wishing for the uninteresting world he lives in to be destroyed. The game masters are quick to give Shun a polar opposite of himself in a classmate Takeru that likes to inflict pain on his peers and during the climax both clash in a fight to the death. Although it might look on the surface that an alien force could be behind everything at the school, there’s a hint that human hands could be the mastermind of it all as it shows a reclusive computer geek in a room controlling things. At two hours long, it’s inevitable that the movie begins to run out of steam during the 2nd hour and although the movie on the whole is interesting, nothing can top the opening spectacle in my opinion. If there’s a social commentary about religion by Miike in the movie, it’s been lost on me due to not understanding Japanese properly. That’s the problem with watching a foreign movie RAW with no subtitles. In order to fully enjoy this movie, I will just have to wait until a subtitled DVD version comes out.

Overall, even though this movie is great to watch, it’s certainly not one of Miike’s best. I enjoyed it up to a point. There was just too much talking going on in some sections for my liking. I did find the set-pieces very inventive and unique but the story did become tiresome as the movie wore on. I felt Miike was trying to lengthen the movie too much. A good 20-25 mins needed to be cut for the pacing to be better. It’s definitely worth a watch though for Miike fans.

Sadako’s Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

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