I can't say I wasn't warned: this movie is based on a video game I have not played. But surely the mechanic is more than the swipe left/swipe right implied here; whatever it is does not translate to a static narrative form as we don't get to make our own observations. This felt like watching the longplay of a dissolute and not especially bright or interesting Japanese Generation Z everybloke whose main achievement in life so far has been to get his (now ex-)girlfriend up the duff. In two sittings due to the loss of propulsion over the first thirty minutes.
Things open with a first-person POV like Hardcore Henry (2015) (Sharlto Copley's in it so surely I've seen it) which evolves into a riff on the subway scene in one of the Matrix sequels: the one-set endless looper. This novelty mechanism put me in mind of Cube (1997) unimaginatively glossed up with GLADOS's testing chamber signage. Things got tediously repetitious, and on a strict interpretation of the rules ("...turn back immediately") one could opine that he should never have made it out of the innermost ring of hell. I think the point was to gesture at the great cycle of life, or to show that time is a flat circle. I doubt it will increase the fertility rate.
Directed and co-written by Genki Kawamura. Kentaro Hirase helped him adapt Kotake Create's video game.
The reviews are evidence that humans can empathise with anything. Brian Tallerico: two-and-a-half stars at Roger Ebert's venue. Liminal. Peter Sobczynski: low-key existential ("liminal") horror. A Critic's Pick by Manohla Dargis: circle of life, set in a liminal space. She seems unaware that the "thick, yellow line on the floor" is tactile paving to guide the visually impaired. I thought that was everywhere in this world.
