My Year in Disturbing Film: Week 15 Part 1 Miike week (part 1)

My year in disturbing film is my weekly column where I devote a few paragraphs to the most fucked up films ever made. Each week I plan on subjecting myself to the most horrific and mentally damaging imagery my mind can handle. I can't promise you this won't be the week I wind up in the hospital...

HERE is a reminder about my rating system for these films

Hmmm so what torment is in store for me this week...
 Ichi the Killer

What is the film about?

Ichi the killer tells two coinciding stories of perversion and depravity. One the one side you have Ichi himself, a socially inept man-child who likes to watch girls get beat and frequents a prostitute who is always black and blue from her violent johns. When Ichi isn’t doing that he’s murdering people as a means of revenge for bullying he received (or did he?) as a kid. Conversely, there’s the story of Kakihara. A crime lord, blond coifed sadomasochistic pervert. Kakihara is trying to figure out what happened to his boss/mentor when he disappears (we the audience already know that Ichi has killed him). All of this really makes the answer to the next question all that easier...

Hmm...I wonder

Is the movie disturbing?

Miike is a master of the fucked up. If the beginning is a good idea of how the rest of the film is going to be, then you know you’re in for a treat (or not if you’re squeamish). The film opens with a man arguing that he should be guarding his boss’ door, but another man tells him no, not when he’s with a woman. The scene cuts to the man in the room with his woman. He’s beating her badly and starts to have rough sex with her. Ichi is watching from the window, masturbating. He knocks over a potted plant and the man goes to check, he slides open the door and no one is there and the camera cuts to the plant covered in cum. If you have a problem seeing guy glue then you’ll probably have a hard time watching this. Though that’s just one of MANY reasons you might have a hard time watching Ichi.

Say hello to the title screen (yes that's what you think it is)

Miike revels in the disturbing and the disgusting, he has guys hung from hooks and tortured with hot cooking oil. They show it up close and personal, you even get to watch the skin bubble up and fry (it’s an amazingly hard thing to watch). He shows people getting beaten to a pulp and mangled beyond recognition and people being cut to pieces, literally (sometimes, by themselves). There are amazing levels of delusion as well and one of the plot points involves learning that one of the central characters has been turned into what he is through hypnosis.

When I say literally, I MEAN literally

It’s essentially a story of perversion though. Ichi likes watching people get raped and can only get it up thinking about a girl he used to know being raped. He also gets off on murdering people. Needless to say if they were using modern forensic techniques they’d have a really easy time finding out who was killing off these people, tons of DNA evidence all over the place if you know what I mean. Kakihara’s techniques as well as his search for someone new to beat him take him to a whole new level in S&M.

Ichi - Portrait of a fucked up dude

Ichi the killer will be a tough sit for most people, but for those versed in Miike’s work. Should be easily enough to get through. Not for the squeamish!

Kakihara loves him some torture (what he does to this guy is arguably one of the hardest scenes in the film to watch)

4 out of 5

Disturbitude: 8 out of 10, it’s a pretty messed up flick.

Next up: Audition – More Miike (This is the first of two scheduled Miike double feature weeks, audition will be posted later in the week)

Much like Jijii, looks can be deceiving

My Year in Disturbing Film: Week 9 - Painful Visions

My year in disturbing film is my weekly column where I devote a few paragraphs to the most fucked up films ever made. Each week I plan on subjecting myself to the most horrific and mentally damaging imagery my mind can handle. I can't promise you this won't be the week I wind up in the hospital...

HERE is a reminder about my rating system for these films

Hmmm so what torment is in store for me this week...

Martyrs - Devine

What is the movie about?
Martyrs takes a couple of interesting turns in the story and plays out like two different films. On the one side we have the beginning of the film where it leads you to believe the story is going to follow a mentally disturbed young girl named lucie who escapes kidnappers as a girl. When she unceremoniously slices her own throat to escape her mental torment the story follows her friend Anna who is then captured by the same people who had kidnapped Lucie so many years ago. she is tortured and beaten in order to provoke a state of ecstasy so she can see what happens after you die, without actually dying. Sounds fun right? This of course brings me to the question you’re dying to have answered…


I SEE YOU!

Is the movie disturbing?
By golly is it. So many terrible things happen in Martyrs that I’m entirely sure if I can remember them all (and I took copious notes). Just reading the above I’ve already told you there’s at least one suicide in the film. We’ll start in the beginning though. We learn at the beginning when Lucie is a little girl she’s tormented by this creature, misshapen and scarred. We next learn that even fifteen years later she’s still being tormented by the creature and soon discover that it’s in her mind. She breaks into a family’s house and murders them with a shotgun; it’s an amazingly brutal scene. Lucie beats the mother’s head in with a hammer, flattening her skull. She’s attacked by the creature again and is sliced multiple times with a razor blade. After about 10 or fifteen minutes of fighting with her imaginary tormentor she takes her own life. The suicide is portrayed with tact though. It clearly shows that Lucie is finally lucid (pun intended) for a moment and realizes the only way to end her pain is to end her life. Sadly this does not make it any easier to watch though.


Lucie rockin a shotgun

When the story shifts to Anna she discovers that the house has a secret basement where women were a woman is being held. She is chained and emaciated. She has a metal visor stapled into her skull with industrial sized staples blocking her vision. She also has barbed wire around her midsection. She is the picture of a tortured and abused woman. The viewers discover that this woman is also suffering from similar visions that are causing her to do harm to herself (we’re told she has visions that insects are crawling on her skin). Her suffering is ended with a bullet to the head.


Imagine THIS in your head for 15 years!

Anna is then chained and it is explained to her what is happening here. The idea is to transform the girls (apparently it works best on young girls) into something more than just themselves. As is explained above they want the girl to transcend the boundaries of the physical being and to see the face of god, so to speak. More specifically to see what it’s like after death and to report back assuming they survive. They don’t have much of a record. In the years they’ve been doing this only four have managed this state and one manages to tell what she saw, yes That one is Anna, but that’s later. Every other girl in the film we only get to see them when they’re at the end of this process and they’re already beaten and destroyed mentally. The most disturbing element is watching Anna going from this very beautiful and lively girl to what she ends up when they’re done with her. She’s quite literally a shell of her former self. The beat her brutally, force feed her and subject her to all sorts of torture and torment. The beatings are shown too graphically, but they’re certainly painful enough to watch. After her last beating she’s left a puffy bruised mess and they strap her into this device and cut off her clothes. They cut away for a minute or two to further along the story and when they return we discover she’s been skinned alive. This single image still haunts me and I watched this movie at least a week before I wrote this review. But we do find out that this apparently has done the trick and she’s achieved the state they have been trying to get out of her and success, she reports back what she’s seen. We’d not privy to this information. A press conference is called to discuss the findings, but it’s never started because the person who was told the information shoots herself in the head. The End. What a brutal way to end a film.


Poor Anna, poor poor Anna

Martyrs is one of the films that will stick with you for a while, even if you’re a more experienced viewer. Some of the things you’re shown don’t leave your head quick. So if I were to say anything it would be this. Make sure you know you’re ready to take in this sort of thing before to start the film because it will mess with you on some level. I loved the film for what it was, but I don’t think I’ll be watching it again any time soon.

5 Skinned Alive girls out of 5

Disturbitude: 10, any film with the amount of torture, beatings and suicides that this film has deserves no less. It’s definitely suggested you follow this up with a lighthearted upbeat comedy. Like this

Next Up: Tetsuo: The Iron Man – A man of (stainless) steel?

P.S. Ouch my brain, glad I survived that one