I'm terrified of Takashi Miike's next film project. I'm a big fan of his style and know that if anyone can make this particular story work, it's Miike, but it's really disturbing.
Production on the film adaptation of the manga Kamisama no Iutoori, aka As God Says, begins next June. Japanese horror split in two very different trends after Battle Royale and Ringu became so successful one after the other. It's not the totality of J-horror, but it is a pair of clear subgenres that began to dominate the field. On one side is the supernatural horror with pale wet ghosts destroying anything they encounter. On the other side is huge body count features often centered on young people thrown into games where people are guaranteed to die. As God Says is the latter style.
In broad strokes, a group of high school students are tossed into a bizarre game where most of them will die. A daruma doll arrives claiming he speaks for God and begins blowing up heads in the protagonist's classroom. It's actually a play on red light, green light, where if you're caught moving at the wrong time, you die. The games only get more twisted and violent from there. I don't want to say there is a wonderful fan translation of the manga online if you want to see what's up, but it's a little too early in the life of the series to hope for officially licensed English translations any time soon.
Writer Muneyuki Kanshiro and artist Akeji Fujimura have created a disturbing world that totally fits Miike's aesthetic; that's what has me so scared. Bloody Disgusting (c/o Variety) has Miike quoted describing the film as, "They live, some heads roll, they run, blood sprays, they cry, they laugh and then they die – in other words, a fun movie." I can't see this getting a wide release in America, but an ultra-violent Miike film coming out in the midst of The Hunger Games fever is going to get a lot of attention. Good for him. More Miike fans is always a good thing.
What I don't like is the general framing of the story. School-set horror is not limited to Battle Royale and teens killing teens is not limited to that and The Hunger Games. I just did a Horror Thursday column on Black Rat which would be closer to As God Says if the horror were purely supernatural. I swore I reviewed X Game, as well, another post-Battle Royale extreme violence with young people horror, but I'm not finding that.
The point is that reducing an unsettling subgenre to just those two titles sets the bar for disappointment. As God Says has more in common with the ultraviolent manga Gantz or the inexplicable arrival of horror in a Deadman Wonderland or even an Attack on Titan than it does with Battle Royale. There's a better context to nail this title in than "It's like Battle Royale or The Hunger Games."
As for the film itself, I'm excited and terrified. Miike has created a few moments in his films that I really struggle to watch. He does not shy away from hitting you with terrible images of brutality to make a greater point about the overriding narrative. As God Says needs that kind of approach to not just be a body count horror. I just dread seeing how he chooses to showcase the mayhem.
