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Film: Death Tube
Release date: 20th September 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 117 mins
Director: Yohei Fukuda
Starring: Shoichi Matsuda, Wataru Kaoru, Ishino Atsushi, Namikawa Hajime, Ashihara Kensuke
Genre: Crime/Horror/Thriller
Studio: 4Digital
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
In a world where images of the macabre and bizarre are readily available, and consumers are becoming more and more difficult to shock, Japanese director Yohei Fukuda (Chanbara Beauty/Tokyo Gore School) brings us Death Tube, a film about an internet site where online voyeurs log on to witness murder as entertainment.
Satoshi Inoue is introduced to a horrific underground website called Death Tube (God knows how YouTube have allowed this, if they are as yet aware - even the logo is identical), where unfortunate victims are brutally murdered live online. The grisly spectacle is filmed by webcams and broadcast over the internet.
Satoshi inexplicably wakes up to find himself an unwilling participant in the proceedings, trapped in a dingy dungeon-like room, with a laptop, linked up via webcam to the Death Tube site, along with 7 other equally terrified victims.
They are taunted by a malevolent yellow bear who appears first as a cartoon on the screen, and then as a man in a suit, who forces them to compete against each other in a series of sadistic games for their lives. Only one of them – the bear informs them – will get the chance to leave Death Tube alive...
Death Tube begins as an exciting, inventive horror, taking a clever new angle on the torture-porn genre. Its use of webcams and a familiar internet site format are exploited well, and make good use of the non-existent budget. Sadly, though, by forty minutes in it feels like Fukuda may have played his hand too soon. The clever use of internet video format begins to feel like old hat, and the shock factor of our main protagonist finding himself the star of the very show he’s been guiltily of enjoying has worn off. By the third act the whole premise of an internet death room is pretty much null-and-void, with the camera cutting less-and-less to the web cam view, and when it does only as an afterthought. Fukuda seems almost weighed down by the weight of his own clever idea, and couldn’t wait to get it out of the way as soon as possible so he could get on with what he really wants to do, which is to make Saw 16.
As a comment on internet consumer culture, and the de-sensitisation of the modern internet user, Death Tube succeeds admirably. Like John McNoughton did so well in Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, Fukuda holds a mirror up to show us our own desire for grisly entertainment. Shocking as it is to see viewers hungrily consume murder-as-entertainment, and comment gleefully on the gruesome action, we cannot escape the fact that we are also watching the grisly events play out for our own enjoyment. However, whereas McNoughton cleverly left the violence largely to our imagination, Fukuda has no such subtle designs. He’s happy to show us every gory, bloody detail - repeatedly and in super slow-mo if necessary.
Death Tube is largely a pastiche of its influences, most obviously the Saw films, but also fellow no-budget underground Asian shockers like The Guinea Pig Series’ Flower Of Flesh And Blood, which it clearly emulates. There’s also shades of Funny Games’ genial tormentors Peter and Paul in the yellow teddy bear, skipping happily among the carnage, and taking guiltless delight in the suffering he causes. He almost winks to us the audience, making us all the more complicit in what’s happening. Unlike Funny Games director Michael Haneke, Fukuda doesn’t present the events in a sterile, analytical way. He’s here to have fun, and doesn’t care who knows it. This isn’t one of Haneke’s lectures, it’s more like Fukuda’s sick joke, and he’s having undeniable fun watching it all play out.
Sadly, the film all too often suffers from its technical limitations. Despite some inventive camerawork (including a beautifully composed final shot, which holds as the credits role), the whole thing looks like it’s been shot on home camcorders. If only Fukuda had had more of the courage of his convictions, and maybe exploited his lack of budget to shoot the whole thing from web-cam mode. Why not? It worked for Paranormal Activity. There’s also a bizarrely jarring classical soundtrack, which you know has been used simply because it hasn’t cost Fukuda anything in royalties. Another sore point (but one which Death Tube can’t be blamed for), is that the English subtitles often can’t keep up with the ‘viewer comments’, which flood the screen as the murders take place - as an English-language viewer you’ll feel as though you’re missing out on a the important voyeuristic element of the film.
Death Tube is a strong amateur effort from a filmmaker you feel is having a wonderful time putting his ideas onto the screen, but doesn't yet have the experience to know how to handle them. It feels like somewhat of a wasted opportunity that the main premise is blown in the first thirty minutes, and the rest of the film tries to live up to its influences instead of forging its own new ground. LOZ
Film: Tokyo Gore School
Release date: 16th August 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 109 mins
Director: Yohei Fukuda
Starring: Masato Hyûgaji, Takafumi Imai, Kenta Itogi, Shinwa Kataoka, Kôhei Kuroda
Genre: Action/Drama/Martial Arts/Mystery
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
With the name Tokyo Gore School, you'd be forgiven for thinking Yohei Fukuda's second feature film to be a gore-fest like the similarly-named Tokyo Gore Police. But, unlike that 2008 effort, this has something rather more topical at its core than rampaging, blood-thirsty mutants.
Handsome, popular, and with a cold streak essential for survival in the ruthless, bully-ridden school in which he is a student, Hayato Fujiwara is sure of academic success. Until, in tandem with the passing of a controversial educational act, his fellow students suddenly begin to behave aggressively towards him.
While on the run, Fujiwara gradually discovers that the source of the violence is a mysterious new cyber game, which blackmails students into preying on their contemporaries in order to keep their own reputations clean. And with a secret that could crush all of his ambitions, Fujiwara has no choice but to fight...
With a title suggestive more of Lloyd than Charlie Kaufman, you would not expect Tokyo Gore School to be an especially intellectually taxing affair, particularly when considering its obvious association with the 2008 shock exploitation movie, Tokyo Gore Police. However, the key themes do exist within the premise for the end result to be of substantial sociological significance: cyber-bulling, the necessity for status, youth in revolt, etc. It is a shame, then, that the film is not quite the sum of its parts, whether director Yohei Fukuda acknowledges that or not. Which is not to make the suggestion that Tokyo Gore School should be judged solely on its levels of intellect, simply that its early attempts to channel through its protagonist a stream of philosophical observations about society promise something more fulfilling and more comprehensible than the repetitive series of chase and fight scenes that seem to make up the bulk of the film's running time.
Online social networks play an important part in Tokyo Gore School, with the ‘game’ played by the students through their mobile phones, which, thanks to the game's creators, adopt radar capabilities, as well as (somehow) access to the fellow competitors' personal details. Most importantly of all, the mobiles have the ability to reveal the players' deepest and most embarrassing secrets, which they must protect from exposure by playing and winning the game. Despite the lack of explanation about just how such secrets are obtained, Fukuda's decision to use the threat of public humiliation as the motivation for the students' violent behaviour seems, at times, an inspired one, forging an amusing metaphor for the social anxieties suffered in school, and the exaggerated response of the students to the potential embarrassment. At the beginning of the film, Fujiwara says to a member of staff, when discussing a fellow students' humiliating experience: "To adults it might seem trivial, but to us it is everything" - effectively establishing the rational for the melodramatic madness to follow.
Comparisons between Tokyo Gore School and the 2000 film Battle Royale are inevitable and, in many cases, logical: both films are based around the idea of a nation so disillusioned by its youth that its government is forced into taking drastic action to bring them to order. They're also both interested in dealing with conflicts within the social hierarchy established in school and how that can is affected when license to engage physically with one another is granted. The crucial difference, however, is that Battle Royale is a film far more comfortable in its own skin than Fukuda's urban-based effort, which fails to emulate the same consistency of tone - Battle Royale retains a satirical joviality throughout the dreadful scenario, which delivers the film from po-faced literality - as well as the same basic effectiveness of storytelling, with Tokyo Gore School introducing the rules of the game in an awkward, staggered fashion rather than choosing to lay it all out at the beginning (something done to great effect in Kinji Fukasaku's cult hit).
In fact it seems that the rules of the games are made up along the way by Fukuda, whose main interest appears to be getting to the next fight, with even the verbal interactions pushing the limits of believability by so regularly devolving into violence not befitting a film which suggests regularly - with Fujiwara's thoughts on the philosophies of life and concerns about being "a winner" in society - its ambition to be a legitimate social commentary. But, while the novelty of it does wear thin, the action is at least honest about what it is trying to achieve, with the fights involving lengthy if not particularly elaborate demonstrations of free-running, as well as hand-to-hand combat choreographed effectively alongside a bleeping techno soundtrack sure to appeal to those with a penchant for adrenaline. It is not unreasonable, even, to suggest that the Tokyo portrayed in the film is not so much meant to be a stark world but rather more an appealing one for the younger generation on which it is based, with a complete absence of adults allowing for a freedom of the city to do battle unhindered.
There are a couple of decent showings to be found from the cast of unknowns and when the film does slow down enough to allow for some verbal interaction, the gritty camerawork and ruddy urban landscape lend weight to the rawness of the performances. J-Pop star Yusuke Yamada is competent enough to negotiate the more brooding scenes, and when it comes to the final, emotional crunch, he ventures from his comfort zone to adequate effect. But it is Masanori Mizuno, playing the Minister of Education's son, who is the most impressive, morphing his character from self-righteous protector to ranting coward in a performance rather beyond his years. Though this ultimately serves to make all the more disappointing the fact that the film does not get the most out of its assets, wasting the actors at its disposal as well as the interesting themes it chooses to touch upon but never thoroughly, convincingly engages.
While an effectively stylish and amusingly exaggerated view of schoolyard politics, Yohei Fukuda's Tokyo Gore School lacks the balance to make it either a relevant social commentary or convincing satire. And while the fight scenes at times thrill, they are repeatedly undermined by the feeling that, in a more stable context, the whole thing would have performed above the expectations set by its unofficial predecessor Tokyo Gore Police. DWS
