They’re not the enemy.

The film that put Shion Sono on the international art house horror map, Suicide Club opens with the bizarre and eerie sight of 54 uniformed teenage schoolgirls queued up beside a subway platform where they hold hands, begin to sing, and then all at once hurl themselves into the path of an arriving train. The police investigation into their deaths seems to be going nowhere when an alarming number of suicides start to sweep through the country, and a semi-anonymous phone tip directs the detectives to a website keeping count of the suicides, sometimes listing deaths even before the police know about them. Braiding together this police procedural narrative with comedic skewerings of Japanese popular culture (most notably through the appearances of the fictional pre-teen pop band called Dessert) and some serious misgivings about the loss of interpersonal contact due to developments in technology, Suicide Club is a tonally shifty film that evades giving the viewer much in the way of resolution even as it leaves you with a set of images and sequences you won’t soon be forgetting. Not to be missed!

For the remainder of the quarter, we will be showing films by contemporary horror film auteurs from France, Japan, and the United States each week. Same time, same place. All are welcome. Tell your family, invite your friends.

Sponsored (or at least turned a blind eye) by the Literature Department, and produced by the usual gang of aficionados. More informative flyers to follow weekly.