SUMMARY
Shun Takahata is a typical bored teenager, but when his high school is forced to play supernatural deadly playground games, he must come to grips with the the value of his and his friends’ lives.
A Gift
Takashe Miike is an amazing director, not always in the quality of his films but certainly in their ambition, number, and variety. With over one hundred films, he has delved into virtually every genre, subject, and budget with varying degrees of success. Because of this variety, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with “As the Gods Will.”
Since the copy I got didn’t come with the box art, I had literally no clue what I was getting into, but if you’ve been following my reviews, you know that’s one of my favorite was to see a movie. So what would it be? Feudal Japan? Indie Drama?
Cube/Jumanji/BattleRoyale/Anime
That’s right. This was a WEIRD movie.
The movie opens on a classroom in which a Doll sits upon the teachers desk, facing away from a group of students, all standing, wide eyed and terrified. The doll begins reciting a rhyme and when it reaches the end, it spins around, glares at anyone who is moving, and their head explodes into small red balls like in boba tea.
Once the doll turns around, one of the students notices a timer counting down and a button that says, “Press, and it’s over."
One student looks at the other and says, “It’s a deadly game of red light green light.”
This is in the first three minutes of the film. The rest is a series of games that the children in this high school are subjected to, winnowing them down to only the best. Through out the contests, the various students contemplate life, its inherent unfairness, its inherent competition, its end, and its worth, all in the most angsty anime fashion.
Several of the game set pieces are nicely done but the film never really rises to the level it starts at with the doll game and it most definitely goes too long. When one of the games started, I found myself thinking, ‘How many more of these are there gonna be? I thought that was the last one.’
I’d love to keep talking about this film but I’m really at a loss. There isn’t anything else to say. It’s just a repetition of games and silently whispered adolescent soliloquies any adult could find comparably reconstructed in their middle school journal.
Verdict
I wish I could say that this movie is worth watching but I really don’t think it is except for the die hard asian cinema fan. For someone who likes anime, this might be up their alley but for the run of the mill movie goer, I really don’t think it would be that enjoyable except for the first twenty minutes or so. The novelty wears off and none of the characters are much deeper than a Dragon Ball Z character. If you didn’t get that reference, skip this one.
