Running Commentary - Suicide Club

So in the pursuit of seeing every screwed up Asian cult film we can, Jonny Prophet and I are watching Suicide Club. What follows is our running commentary (Jonny's thoughts are italicized)...

WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS

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So a bunch of happy girls are lining up on the subway platform… maybe it’s because I already know what is about to happen, but this cheery music is awesome! They all jump in front of a speeding train in an explosion of blood that would even make Kill Bill say “what the fuck?!” Everyone’s running and screaming.  Personally I have to wonder if the train would even make it through a wall of meat over 50 people long. It might even derail.

The saddest part is that all of those Japanese girls will now never be able to sleep with Jonny Prophet.

It is tragic. Jonny is a caring and tender lover.

Is ‘caring and tender’ German for selfish?

Now we have some weird underage girl pop band that wants to be mailed to me or something disturbing like that. Somehow this is more disturbing than the dozens of girls committing suicide. Or maybe there’s just something wrong with me.

Then the pop band disappears and we are in a hospital with 2 sexy nurses. Seriously, they are wearing sexy nurse outfits. In America we don’t have sexy nurse outfits, only scrubs.

Fuck you, Zack Braff! 

There’s a nurse taking the elevator to a dark floor.

Doesn’t anyone pay the electric bills at this hospital?  I would think that the lights being off would be a good indication that the bakery is closed.

Security guard guy who listens to the radio like he’s watching porn tells the nurse about the mass suicide. She doesn’t seem too bothered. I guess a lifetime of weathering Godzilla attacks will desensitize you like that.

You know, this is the way lots of pornos start… sexy nurse, security guard, dark hospital…

You’ve been jerking off to horror movies, you idiot! 

Why does the security guard’s patch say ‘SS’ on it? Did the sexy nurse jump out the window?

Who is destroying all the sexy chicks in Japan? This is a major catastrophe!

This guy is the worst security guard in history.

In a hospital that keeps its lights off most of the time, you really think they would spring for competence?

So the nurse jumping out of the window doesn’t cause our brave security guard to scream like a girl, but the lights turning back on does? 

Magic murder bag!

The detective says “It’s not a crime, it was an accident.” 

They all slipped.

Then he’s like “Stop being so glum”

Yeah, it’s not like you’ve never seen 54 kids all commit suicide in unison before!

How come in Japan the lead investigator always seems to be a sexy brooding man with long hair? He gets a mysterious phone call.

The voice on the other end said “seven days.”

No it didn’t. The voice said there’s a website the brooding detective should check out.

Is it porn?

The site has red and white dots that represent women and men. When was this movie made, the early 90’s? Websites really sucked back then. Stop saying WWW with every web address, we already know it gets W’s!

She hung up… and none of the cops in the place thought to trace the call. Must be the ones who hired that security guard.

Now the cops are checking out the magic murder bag. They all seem to be disgusted. Probably copies of Norbit inside.

Or Gwyneth Paltrow’s head.

No, that was in a box.

No, Justin Timberlake’s dick is in a box.

It sure is.

How did the transit authority get all the blood off that white bag? It looks like new! Thankfully they left the visceral fruit by the foot inside.

Or the skin movie roll!

Alright, Human Centipede! Seriously, isn’t it the mortician’s job to separate the severed limbs rather than just leave it all in a pile of gore?

So brooding detective and “I’m too old for this shit” detective are investigating the subway. Their on a train full of… sleeping people?

‘Recent Crime Scene – Call if you have information’ Information like what the crime was?

This may be why murder mysteries get left unsolved in Japan.

Japanese Danny Glover comes home to his wife. After a long beat of them staring at each other, she says “Welcome home.”

I’ve been home for 35 minutes! You’ve just been staring at me the whole time!

He calls his kids down for dinner… “What do you want, Dad, I was just about to commit suicide!”

What is with this girl pop group? Are they causing everyone to commit suicide?

It’s like the reversal of “Big Fun” in the movie Heathers… “Teenage suicide… hey, why not?”

BUNNIES! Man, now I’m going to be wondering what they’re up to the rest of the movie.

People playing soccer… now I’m going to be wondering how the game is going the rest of the movie.

So these teens are talking about starting a suicide club… I don’t know if they’re joking or not. One of the guys suggests the night before they do it to have a huge party with lots of food and sex. Man, why didn’t we have suicide clubs when I was in high school? I get laid, and then I’m like… “Naw, I don’t feel much like killing myself at the moment, I’ll catch you guys later.”

I always thought living in Japan would be cool. Why commit suicide?

I think Playstations were invented as a suicide club alternative.

3 kids didn’t jump off the building… “I was joking!”

3 people didn’t commit to the club. Oh wait… just one

Oh, there are all the people who aren’t suicidal and plead to the last girl to get off the ledge… Where the fuck were they a minute ago? The last girl declares she and the rest were charter members of the suicide club, then jumps. I guess they won’t be needing varsity jackets.

No, don’t jump! Jonny loves you! Why does this keep happening to me?

They should have at least had the sexy party first!

One of the cops finds a severed ear on a window ledge. He has it pushed off and shouts to the people below “Here comes an ear!” That’s pretty funny.

The lead detective declares it nothing more than a “suicide fad”… you know, like Furby and pogs.

So this chick gets hit by her falling friend… and gets her ear hurt. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse. Turns out the guy who jumped was her boyfriend. She reacts to all this by going for a cup of coffee. Classic sign of a caffeine addict.

The mortician matches up a strip of flesh with a tattoo on it to the dead boyfriend. "His tramp stamp is successfully reattached, sir."

They’re making her strip for being hit by a guy… and she wants Japanese Mel Gibson to watch!

That's probably normal procedure when questioning a sexy chick in Japan. Then she leaves the police department with a yellow umbrella so as to one day be part of a very long story about hooking up with Ted Mosby.Brooding cop runs up to her and gives her his number.

Dude, she doesn’t want to go out with you Asian Riggs!

Seriously, all day people watch this damn girl pop group on TV!

Damn cable company, making us pay for channels we don’t want!

I like kitty. Very messy apartment. Maybe these chicks will love me.

People are going on the crappy dial-up era internet. Some site says you need to spread some message to stop the suicides or else everyone will die. Is that just in Japan or the entire world? What about tribes in Africa who’ve never seen a computer?

I think Japanese Murtaugh just ‘friended’ someone on the suicide website.

Mysterious phone call to the old guy detective. The kid voice said “There is no suicide club.” Well, not anymore… they’re all dead!

The same voice calls back and says 50 more will jump from the train platform from earlier.

The kid on the phone coughs after every sentence! What, does he have emphysema?

Maybe the kid is committing slow suicide by smoking.

The cops are at the train platform to make sure nobody jumps. Brooding detective has collapsed on the stairs as lots of happy Japanese girls walk past. He tries to stop them from committing suicide, but they were just going on the train. Poor detectives… they came all this way and nobody is trying to off themselves. Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed. Not really sure why Japanese Riggs got sick.

There are weird parts to this movie where I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Women are holding up cardboard signs with slogans like “jump here.” Some guy is doing a comedy play. And there’s this really cheery music. Some group of women hung themselves. Little girl asks mom for candy.

Oh man, her mom just cut off her finger and doesn’t seem to care!

Some sad chick puts her head in an oven… THAT’S AN ELECTRIC OVEN YOU DUMB BITCH!

A fat guy kills himself in front of an audience.

Best comedy act ever! 

Oh God, the mom is still chopping off her fingers! And she’s smiling the whole time… and there’s this noise like when you stir a bowl of gelatin!

She seems so happy, though.  Oh, and the oven chick’s head is on fire.

If this is all caused by some pop band, why haven’t people killed themselves after listening to Justin Bieber?

The music for this entire montage was really screwed up.

Murtaugh comes home and his daughter is soaked in blood. No biggie, it’s baptismal  pig sacrifice night!

Some guys attack the chicks in the messy apartment.

They didn’t kill the cats, so I’m happy.

They take the chicks to a bowling alley and make them lay on the lanes. The leader of these guys is like a weird Japanese glam Marilyn Manson. He declares that he and his crew are the Suicide Club. And he stepped on a cat they brought in a bag! He killed it!

YOU’RE A BAD MAN! DON’T HURT KITTIES!

This guy is a sick fuck. He likes stomping on animals. Then he sits in a chair.

Not as good as the chair in Max Payne.

Yes, this is the perfect time to break into song.

Not a bad song, though. People are in sacks all over the bowling alley and struggling… either to get out or to dance. Oh wait, one of the guys in the club killed a person in the sack, then emerged like he creamed his pants during the experience.

Murtaugh’s son is dead. The detectives are bummed. I wonder what those bunnies are doing right now?

Oh, now the coughing kid’s called back. 

Bunnies are back! The coughing kid owns the bunnies! Kid’s talking about connections… don’t know what this is all about. The music’s sad, though… so it must be important. Now some other kid asks why Murtaugh only thought of his own pain rather than others. Then Murtaugh kills himself.

Now he can be part of the club!

So one of the 2 abducted chicks is in a sack and feels over to find her roommate is lying dead next to her. She doesn’t take that well. She gets up and runs, still covered in the sack, gets to a computer and types for help. The club guys catch her. Manson guy, whose name is Genesis apparently, decides it’s time to get caught and types his location. In news footage we see the Suicide Club got caught. Then we get more of the pop group. Then we get Genesis, who declares himself the “Charlie Manson of the Information Age.” Damn… I was off by one Manson.

Then we get scenes with the chick with the hurt ear looking sad. Then we see a plastic bag in the wind to appease the weird kid from American Beauty… a key demographic for a fucked up movie like this.

You’d think the movie would be over by now.

Why the fuck do Japanese people all flash peace signs in photographs? She is going through the apartment of her friend who committed suicide and learns he was a big pervy fan of that pre-teen girl pop group.

He was about to be on “To Catch a Predator.”

So this random chick is able to break the suicide club code. Why does Tokyo even have a police force? Apparently the pop girls are involved.

The cops are investigating the dot site since the suicides are still occurring. The dots start beeping frantically! Oh my God, R2D2’s the killer!

What the fuck. This movie went art film all of the sudden!

The sad ear girl ends up on a stage in front of an audience of creepy kids. They applaud their own existential comments on death and life, then lower the curtain on her. Then we are treated to a room of people getting their tattoos ripped off… and baby chicks.

More proof birds are evil.

Creepy kids stare at the meaty fruit by the foot roll. The security guard hung himself next to the magic murder bag.

The ending is just weird. Girls on the way to the train platform all get cell phone calls simultaneously. Broody detective tries to grab ear girl and pull her away from the edge. She breaks his grip, looks at him like “What the hell is your problem?” and then boards the train.

The movie ends with the "final performance" of the girl pop group. What the fuck did I just watch?

Suicide Club has a really fucked up artsy ending to what is otherwise a cult horror movie. “You still have a connection to the world after you die, so why are you living?”

I think the lesson here is that children are not to be trusted. In fact, I think Suicide Club stands as a prequel of sorts to Battle Royale. People catch on to the creepy kids convincing people to kill themselves, so the government rounds up all the kids and send them to an island to fight to the death. With the fucked up, convoluted ending this movie has, why the hell not?

Final thoughts: Suicide Club is like a weird take on Heathers, but with a surreal ending that will make me question many things... until realizing that a film like this shouldn't have an artsy ending! Suicide Club should actually have explained what was going on. I fail to see how a Kidz Bop-like pop group can elicit suicidal reactions from people, unless it's just to end the pain of listening to their music. If it was some sort of technological placement of subliminal ideas into people's heads, that really should have been explored further. As it stands, I feel like the writer got 2/3 done with a horror script, couldn't figure out an ending, so just hobbled together some art school bullshit for Act III. It feels out of place, makes no sense and ultimately leads me to wonder what this film could have been in regards to a statement about the malaise of human life in a quickly advancing technological world.  Instead, we just got a mess... not unlike that pile of bloody limbs and entrails left on the slab in the morgue.