20131221: Horror Review--Psycho Gothic Lolita

Psycho Gothic Lolita (Gosurori shokeinin)

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Japanese live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 87 minutes, action, horror.  Spoken word is in Japanese; subtitles in English.
2. IMDB: 5.7/10.0 from 347 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet...' and 45% liked it from 64 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 26,260 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Go Ohara.
6. Starring: Rina Akiyama as Yuki, Ruito Aoyagi as Masato (Viscous Gentleman), Asami as Shimada's Girlfriend, Yukihide Benny as Shimada (Gambler).


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film opens to spaghetti being eaten with an emphasis on the slurping while smoking a cigarette with one's hair grazing the spaghetti.  This is a gambling den, where poor people are being tortured or murdered at the amusement of the rich.  The camera meanders from one wretched scene to the next until it focuses on two well-to-do criminals who are gambling over odd versus even for the roll of two dice.  The winner gets to shoot three tied up victims.  After this is completed, the 'loser' gets upset, and the woman who rules the roost calls for her bouncers to settle things down unless the two parties shut up.  One party leaves, while the other braces for confrontation.


2. Yuki, dressed in Goth style, arrives and beats the nonsense out of everyone except the gambling den owner, whom she decapitates.  After the bloodbath, Yuki goes home to her paraplegic father, who had been giving prayers at a small indoor shrine.  Miraculously, Yuki's clothes have no blood splatter or spaghetti sauce on them. Yuki burns a card that symbolizes her opponent in her recent victory.


3. There are a number of filler segments, sometimes in flashbacks.
1. The spaghetti segment at the start.  It certainly justified the death of the spaghetti eater and any of his cohorts, but it did not advance the plot or deepen character development.


2. There's the segment about the chemistry teacher who wants to demonstrate telekinesis on a spoon, but sends wind up the girls' skirts instead.


3. Anything involving the nonsense character Elle. There were four of these.  The worst was when Yuki and Elle have guns drawn at point blank range, and they don't fire.  Elle takes a phone call, which goes on  and on.  Sure.  Yuki tries to break Elle's neck.  Takes forever.  Both Yuki and Elle have unlimited numbers of bullets in their guns.


4. The laughing of her fifth opponent went on ad nauseam.


4. Ridiculous fight scenes:
1. The mob fight scene in the gambling den.  Yuki spins with her umbrella and defeats/knocks down a dozen larger attackers with knives, swords, and the like.  Yuki kills target number one, but that took three, perhaps four, seconds.


2. Yuki versus chemistry teacher, mop versus umbrella.  After a bit he showed he could fly; still, it was a mop versus an umbrella.  In the middle of the fight, he stops to comb the mop's hair.  This was one of the persons who killed Yuki's mother. She did not really pursue the question of why he did it, or whether his allies posed further threat.  This was target number two.


3. Seven guys in a fight club decide to beat up a man with no training whatsoever.  Yuki challenges them.  They yell for a while, then use their bodies to form English letters.  Then they form a character with the group, and say, 'We are kamikaze!'  With that sort of introduction, how serious could this group be?  Grunting and her umbrella seem to be enough for her to prevail.  Absurd.  Actually, this should be under 'filler segments.'  This goes on and on.  The amusing part was that their victim was the one she came to kill, Yuki's target number three.


4. Yuki's fights with Elle, her victim number four.  This was about as credible as the mid-level opponent fights in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.  Whereas fully trained men who each have 50 to 70 pounds of muscle on Yuki cannot defeat Yuki, the diminutive child Elle (a lightweight well under five feet tall) wounds Yuki and narrowly missed killing her.  This is the ultimate foulness of this movie.  It embraces the unlikely or the impossible.  Rather, it seems to insist on it, and rejoice in it.  Yuki and Elle fire well over 50 bullets at each other in the second fight...and land zero of them.


5. This continues for another 25 or so minutes.  It does not get better.


3. Conclusions
1. Slurping spaghetti (70 maybe 80 decibels) with one's hair in the spaghetti while smoking a cigarette; nice. This really is a horror film.  The sound of the slurping was indeed wretched.
2. One line summary: Weak story, poor execution, still a gorefest.
3. One star of five; two black holes for acting and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Dark and soft focus for too many frames.


2. Sound: 7/10 OK


3. Acting: 0/10 No credible performances.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Terrible.