Name: King of Thorn (2009)
IMDb: link to IMDb
Genres: Anime, SciFi Country of Origin: Japan
Cast: Kana Hanazawa as Kasumi Kashiki, Kousei Hirota as Alexandro Pecchino, Misaki Kuno as Alice, Tsutomu Isobe as Ivan Coral Vega, Toshiyuki Morikawa as Marco Owen.
Written and directed by: Kazuyoshi Katayama.
The Three Acts:
The initial tableau:
The Medusa virus has turned many people to stone, and the government has no cure in sight. A few people are placed in cryosleep against the day when a vaccine is found. The female heroine is one of the sleepers. When she awakes, the world is not all that pleasant. The action starts with the disease spreading in the USA.
Delineation of conflicts:
The Venus Gate Corporation, sponsors of the cold sleep, are led by religious fanatics who think the world is about to end (true in some sense in this film) and that they are the ones chosen to survive. Sadly, Venus Gate can only support 160 sleepers. The NSA thinks Venus Gate is a terrorist organisation, and plans to exact some sort of strong arm intervention when the sleep centre is opened.
At the cryogenic chambers at a remote castle in Scotland, the sleepers find out that a big automation program (Alice) will be monitoring them, so they do not have to worry about the attendants dying from Medusa. The sleep is scheduled for 100 years, like 'Sleeping Beauty.' Of the 160, all wake up OK, but 153 are killed by flesh-eating birds, and a massive carnivore in the elevator well. Alice is unresponsive, and the Venus Gate staff are mostly dead.
The seven survivors attempt valiantly to free themselves from this terrible, dark, underground place filled with monsters. The party finds some truths and many lies along the way. One of the truths was that the Venus Gate personnel were looking for individuals with strong obsessions, such as the character Marco, whose sister Laura dies early in the film. Venus Gate, via some sort of mind control, hopes to harness the supernatural powers of the obsessed, and gain these powers for themselves.
This film is billed as adventure-horror, but it is neither. This is a psychological drama with supernatural overtones. The only real conflict ever in the film was the conflict within Kasumi about whether or not to decide to live.
Resolution:
The protagonist, Kasumi Ishiki, is an infected girl whose twin sister Shizuku was not chosen for the cryosleep. The twins' parents died from Medusa, and Kasumi had tried to kill herself before. As the viewer watches the multiple layers of convoluted re-tellings of the same story, one sees that the central actor in all this is Kasumi with her obsession with death. The re-tellings are forced on the viewer as Kasumi finally releases herself from her obsession. All the death and destruction are supernatural collateral damage for this return to normal mental health.
One line summary: Psychological drama with supernatural overtones.
Statistics:
Art: 10/10 Between good and wonderful at all times.
Sound: 9/10 Sufficient. Some of it was exceptional.
Voice Actors: N/A Since I'm reading the subtitles, the best I can say is that they are not irritating, and the voice actors' voices seem to suit the ages and stages of the characters.
Screenplay: 10/10 . Almost two hours of psychological drama is usually way too much for me, so the writing was absolutely brilliant, since I watched the whole thing.
Final Rating: 9/10
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