Japan, such a wonderful country with a rich history, makes some of the most absurdist movies on the planet. There are some movies so wild you start to think, "What magical drugs do they have there that causes people to come up with this stuff?". While some of the movies are creative and entertaining, being weird for weird's sake isn't always a good thing. That's where TAG comes in. It's weird, but not in a good way. Let me explain....
The movie starts out AMAZINGLY. Girl is on a field trip, riding a bus with her classmates, when an invisible force slices the bus in half laterally, taking the lives of everyone on it except the main character. This happens in the first 10 minutes of the movie. The level of gore and depravity involved in this is commendable and I thought, "This movie is going to be great!" A movie about an invisible force that slices everything it comes across in half, leaving blood and gore in its wake? This is going to be an awesome movie! Man, was I WRONG. The invisible force was around for those 10 minutes and it never shows up again. Instead, we get a series of "alternate universes", each weirder than the next. There are only females in this movie, so everything that happens comes off as a middle school kids daydream playbook.
Panty shots of High School aged girls? Check.
Women in scantily clad underwear? Check.
Girls fighting each other and killing each other in brutal ways? Check.
A dude in a pig mask? Check
It's like a child was asked "What type of movie to do you want to see?" and he answered, "Girls! Panties! Underwear! Fighting! Pig man!" and someone said, "We can make a movie out of that!". Absolutely tragic that someone thought that this would be appropriate for a feature length film, but here we are.
It's to serious to be a comedy, not scary enough to be a horror film, not sad enough to be a drama, and definitely not enjoyable enough to be a full movie, so what gives? It's absurdist cinema with a low budget and not enough creative reigning in. This movie needed quality control, it desperately needed and editor, and it most assuredly needed to be screened a lot before it was released. There is no audience in the world that would find this movie enjoyable as a whole, although certain parts are so wild that they almost make up for the failure that is the rest of the film.
Look, I love absurdist cinema and I would enjoy it more if it tried to be absurdist. Instead, we get a movie that IS absurdist, but takes itself WAYYYY too seriously. I wouldn't recommend this movie to ANYONE, except those that want to test their patience for weird, drug-induced nonsense.
The movie starts out AMAZINGLY. Girl is on a field trip, riding a bus with her classmates, when an invisible force slices the bus in half laterally, taking the lives of everyone on it except the main character. This happens in the first 10 minutes of the movie. The level of gore and depravity involved in this is commendable and I thought, "This movie is going to be great!" A movie about an invisible force that slices everything it comes across in half, leaving blood and gore in its wake? This is going to be an awesome movie! Man, was I WRONG. The invisible force was around for those 10 minutes and it never shows up again. Instead, we get a series of "alternate universes", each weirder than the next. There are only females in this movie, so everything that happens comes off as a middle school kids daydream playbook.
Panty shots of High School aged girls? Check.
Women in scantily clad underwear? Check.
Girls fighting each other and killing each other in brutal ways? Check.
A dude in a pig mask? Check
It's like a child was asked "What type of movie to do you want to see?" and he answered, "Girls! Panties! Underwear! Fighting! Pig man!" and someone said, "We can make a movie out of that!". Absolutely tragic that someone thought that this would be appropriate for a feature length film, but here we are.
It's to serious to be a comedy, not scary enough to be a horror film, not sad enough to be a drama, and definitely not enjoyable enough to be a full movie, so what gives? It's absurdist cinema with a low budget and not enough creative reigning in. This movie needed quality control, it desperately needed and editor, and it most assuredly needed to be screened a lot before it was released. There is no audience in the world that would find this movie enjoyable as a whole, although certain parts are so wild that they almost make up for the failure that is the rest of the film.
Look, I love absurdist cinema and I would enjoy it more if it tried to be absurdist. Instead, we get a movie that IS absurdist, but takes itself WAYYYY too seriously. I wouldn't recommend this movie to ANYONE, except those that want to test their patience for weird, drug-induced nonsense.