Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing
Review: Suicide Club is extremely intriguing and itself is a cinematic puzzle. If you are not in the mood for thinking about a movie this movie is certainly not for you. While the film can be EXTREMELY disturbing at times ( especially at the beginning of the film). The effects of the deaths are rather cheesy but the movie is more of a shock/psychological thriller. A puzzle it self I believe the habitants of Tokyo could relate to this film much better than us Americans! I mean the sining group of girls who sing songs about mail and how the world is a giant jigsaw puzzle? I am sure they have bands like that in Japan. The little girls songs seem to show a hidden message of suicide ( you will see). Of course I seem to lose it when the teen is being interrogated by the little death children and they clap every time she responds? Or the part when the detective comes home and you see his daughter then I wonder what the f*** happened to the stupid people. Then the director kills of the main character so how does the movie end. If the director didn't have such a pure vision for his film and bothered make some sense and it THEN I WOULD GIVE IT 5 STARS!
Rating: 
Summary: "every day we push buttons that execute a million commands"
Review: Suicide Club opens with 54 Japanese school girls jumping off a subway platform in front of an oncoming train and just gets better from there. As a horror fan, I loved this movie for it's disturbing violence and genuine creepiness, but the social commentary and philosophy behind it is equally effective.
The opening scene was mindblowing for obvious reasons. But what made the movie even better after that was seeing how this effected the rest of society. If this actually happened, it would probably have an intense effect on everyone in the culture, in ways such as what we see here: it begins a wave of suicides across Tokyo.
At the heart of the story is a group of very young children, who make mysterious phone calls to the police, and ask questions with philosophical ramifications which would seem far beyond the comprehension of their tender years. While this seems ridiculous, I believe this group is shown as children because they represent truth and purity. If they had been adults, they would immediately appear to be sinister, and I don't feel that they were. While they seem connected to the suicides, it becomes clear that this is, in no way, their intention. The theme they present is that of being "connected to yourself" and "connected to everyone else." It is difficult for some people to maintain one connection without severing the other. How do I assert my individuality without alienating myself from my family, and from society? How do I take care of everyone around me without conforming to the will of the group? These are some of the issues the characters in this film are struggling with.
There is a scene later on that asks the age old parent-to-teenager question, "If all your friends jumped off a building, would you do it, too?" and answers it with disturbing results. The idea of being "connected to yourself" as an individual is examined here, and in the recurring theme of the J-pop group, Dessart. When the suicides begin to occur at a more rapid rate, one of the kids in the Japanese Junior Spice Girl group says, "Everybody's acting funny lately. We hope this song cheers everyone up!" Up to this point, I was looking at that little girl and saying to myself, "Yeah, right! You hope that song drives everyone to suicide!" But by the end, I was not so sure.
If we listen to the lyrics of Dessart, what we find is nothing so deep and philosophical, but something to appeal to people who may be lost because they are having trouble maintaining the connections the children are concerned with. The first song we hear, "Mail Me," says, "By phone or PC, MAIL ME, you should know as friends go yours is the best hello, MAIL ME, I need to hear from you now, or I'LL DIE." This is something that young people would be able to relate to if they were connected to others, but not to themselves. It is possible to be connected to someone else, but you will still be alright by yourself if you do not hear from that person. You will not die without communication from someone else. The inclusion of the J-pop group further illustrates this idea of connections--you can value the ideas of everyone around you without owning a pop group's CD just because "everyone has one." And the theme of suicide, committed because others are doing it--I can have empathy for that person feeling his/her life was not worth living without coming to the conclusion that my own life cannot be worth living.
The philosophy about connections becomes physically manifest in a clue the police keep finding--a chain of rectangular pieces of skin sewn together. It symbolizes pieces of individuals, all slighly different from each other, literally connected to each other.
At one point, the movie goes off on a tangent into a scene with a serial killer named Genesis, who performs a violent and Rocky Horror-esque musical number. This awesome, if puzzling, interlude is actually an example of a person who is completely connected to himself, but not to other people. Genesis has completely asserted his own individuality, but lacks a connection to human kind. He does what he wants without respecting the lives of others, and so he kills.
As the film progresses, it becomes apparent that the strange goings on do seem to be leading back to the cult of children. But it doesn't seem to be the children and their message that is causing the suicides, but rather a failure on part of those who speak to them to fully digest the message for themselves. When they ask, "If you die, would your connection to your loved one remain? If yes, then, why are you living?" they mean to make people understand that their connection to themselves is valuable to their life. Instead, people come away thinking that there is, in fact, no reason to live, because the connection they have to people would not be severed by their own death.
In the end, Dessart gives a final performance, and says, "Our final message to you: LIVE AS YOU PLEASE." Is Dessart connected to the mysterious children? The ending would tell you, probably so. In spite of their best efforts, their message was being corrupted and misinterpreted, and causing people more pain, so the children choose to end their mission.
Director Shion Sono examimes many themes present in Japanese culture, so it will help if you know a little bit about this before viewing Suicide Club. However, most of what he deals with, peer pressure, conformity, suicide, have universal interest. This is a brilliant movie, but takes a few viewings to fully absorb.
Rating: 
Summary: Deliciously creepy start, but then the plot goes AWOL
Review: The film starts off wonderfully with the infamous multiple train-jumping suicide. It's right there on platform 8, the chuo-sen (I will definitely think odd thoughts next time I catch that one!), the music from Shinjuku station is going, and the very creepy combination of such akarui kids all jumping - why? Something is just wrong, in the air... This is followed up by some very disturbing scenes of more suicides, all very intriguing, is it murder? Is it mass hysteria, codes in the pop culture? Alienation in society itself being sparked by...?So there are clues, the police get involved, all very good. Lots of nice dark things to think about, to ponder on. Some very intriguing and wonderfully horribly disturbing things could be going on... But they don't. Instead, the plot falls apart (perhaps it jumped). Things change from a good mystery to... what, exactly? There are some more gory scenes (including a self-mutilation scene that I couldn't bear to look at) but none of it is nearly as disturbing or intriguing as the first part of the film, because nothing is tied together. I am not someone who demands a neat ending, but the entire genre of the film switches abruptly in the middle. It's not that the mystery isn't solved, but rather that it's forgotten along the way. I am also not a regular horror film viewer, but merely shocking gore does not a creepy dark film make. As someone who came up in Japan I would recommend renting it just for the imagery of the opening parts, particularly if you've ever been there on platform 8 or gone to high school. But I'd probably pass on buying it, as someone who prefers a good story.
Rating:
Summary: help this asian film lover to understand
Review: The first hour or so of this film is truly amazing !!. seriously.
You find yourself baffled and looking for what is causing these suicides. There is a web page that updates everytime someone is killed....these circles representing each death vibrate....are they hipnostising the victim to kill themselves???? everytime this pop song plays on the tv or radio, someone seems to commit suicide...who knows what's going on. Twenty minutes before the end we see the main character unable to accept his loss in his family, commit suicide himself!!! wow!!! then we see an over the top character claiming to be a modern age manson. How is he responsible for the suicides?? is he responsible??? apparently there are undertones here warning us about pop culture and a girl in the film cracks some kind of code, revealing the relationship between the pop group and the deaths.
What follows does not make any sense at all.
Personally, to me, even though other reviewers out there are saying there are many hidden messages here, it feels like the director came to a point in the film where he wasn't sure what to blame the suicides on and threw in an abrupt inexplicable ending.
It is a real shame. What start off as an awsome thrilling film (up there with RING,DARK WATER and AUDITION) becomes a serious let down.
I love david lynch, Polish bros etc etc. I love puzzles!! but here I feel like I have been cheated out of any explanation whatsoever!
Rating:
Summary: Mail Me
Review: The Japanese pull no punches with their horror films and this is not any exception. How many films have you seen lately where a train cuts a bloody swath through a station because 54 schoolgirls have just thrown themselves on the tracks? Not many, I bet, and that's just in the first 5 minutes or so of the film. Japan is being hit by a wave of unexplainable suicides, and there are a few "Silence of the Lambs" type things going on here too, but this is a few notches above that on the uncomfortable meter. Perhaps the key to all this is in some innocent little pop band of girls, average age 12.5, who have a big hit "Mail Me"? They're called Dessert, Desert, Dessart, who knows, it's spelled differently through the film. Or perhaps this all has to do with a creepy serial killer rock star named Genesis? If you've watched the whole movie than you can tell me, because nothing is ever truly resolved, to my knowledge, but still this is a wild and gruesome movie and truly deserving of the attention of any horror fan that can read subtitles. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: sickening and stupid
Review: The movie simply out, has no story to it. Groups of people jump off of buildings, or in front of oncoming trains, body parts fly everywhere, and our heroes, the local cops, try to make sense of it...oh yes, the internet is thrown in ( i guess that's like saying movies in the 1940's had automobiles ). In this case, the net supposedly has clues to what is causing this mass self killings. In the end, no sense is made at all---clearly the writer and director had a message about the hateful sameness of life in crowded Japan, where everyone looks the same ( japanese culture is notoriously intolerant of different ethnic groups ), and everyone does the same thing, riding crowded commuter trains and the worshipping commercial blaring tv at home. A weak attempt is made towrds the end to explain the effort of some sort of either a cult or perhaps even a master force that communicates via the medium of the moment ( WWW, TV ) to get it's message of suicide to the next chosen group, ( naturally, the HQ of the master force is a tv station ) but it is never explained and makes absolutely no sense. one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: Underlying tones of pop culture and selfishness
Review: the other 5 star reviewers said it perfectly this movie it worth your time. It will amaze you.
Rating:
Summary: Makes you wanna...
Review: The premise of the movie is intriguing and the first hour at least kept my interest. The tone of the film is all over the place, so I wouldn't say the execution was great. Ryo Ishibashi is the lead in this and he is a great actor (as best seen in "Audition"). The problem is that after the first hour, the movie takes a horrid turn into some nightmarish faux musical. I'm not kidding, if you blink, you'll think you're watching a Japanese take on John Waters. The next half hour quickly deteriorates into an unwatchable mess. Horrible, truly horrible, and an absolute waste of time.
Rating: 
Summary: Strangely Intriguing
Review: There is no doubt that Suicide Club will leave you haunted, and asking questions about what the plot was about. Shion Sono was more concerned about conveying a message than giving us a plot, and the confusing imagery and lack of connections between characters were part of the puzzle. However, I am still perplexed myself about many things, however, I truly enjoyed this movie.
The gore was great, all those neat little girls in their school uniforms joining hands jumping in front of a subway train. The kid s jumping off buildings had an enormous amount of shock value that kept you watching the movie in awe. The mysterious "Bat"
person, and the Glam Rock person that came out of nowhere, just to mention a few characters.
It's futile to try to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Sono's message is about what is happening to our younger generation today with all the pop culture and pressures they have. Trying to find out who you are when you're a teenager is a nightmare, especially today with all our new technology. We have computers, video games with lavish graphics, music videos giving you subliminal messages, and so on. So, these kids are confused, lack identity, and are depressed in this film and if suicide is the thing to do, or the trend it could possibly happen.
This is a dark satire about the vast differences between the older and new generation and lack of communication between them. As far as the film, if you can view it not expecting it to make a whole lot of sense, some of it will eventually make some sense.
Rating:
Summary: Genesis is hotter than YOU!
Review: there were a few times during this movie that i had to walk out with my friends and smoke a cigarette just to chill out a bit. i know alot of people can just watch wave after wave of psyche-defying mutilation and giggle, and i thought i could, but i really can't. honestly, people say the message this movie offers has nothing to give to an american public. i disagree. i find the message all too relevant. i liked the movie. not so much for the particulars of cinematography or linear plotline, but for the awesome GEEK moments. i hope that if i ever jump off a building and land on my wife on the way down, she'd go and get a cup of coffee afterwards. that and if for nothing else, you must see the character called GENESIS. HE IS HOTTER THAN YOU!
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