MovieChat Forums > Ôdishon (2000) Discussion > Lost me in the last 35 minutes

Lost me in the last 35 minutes

posted 10 years ago by tpupkin
1 reply | jump to latest

Like many others here, it seems, I put off watching this for a long time. My experiences with Japanese torture porn haven't been positive, and I thought this was supposed to be considered the high-art apex of that genre.

I finally watched it last night and I was pretty relieved to find that it was nowhere near as relentlessly gross as I had expected. However, even though I really liked the first 80 minutes, once he starts his drug hallucination at home the movie lost me as a viewer.

Unless the entire movie was a hallucination, the 15-minute drugged sequence doesn't make any sense. I can buy that she told him darker details about herself during their dates, but he ignored them until the drugs; but how would be able to hallucinate about the man in the bag, when he has no knowledge about the man in the bag?

Even if you back-up to the hotel room when he wakes up alone, that wouldn't explain the man in the bag being part of his revelatory dream.

That aside, it never felt like the torture scene at the end was organically derived from the story. It felt forced and like a cynical shock tactic.

While I get that Miike was teasing us with a few potential endings that turned out not be real, I didn't like any of the endings: I strongly dislike "it was all a dream" twists, but then to go from that to "boy saves the day" felt even lamer. Neither of these was an improvement from the ridiculous torture sequence.

Big disappointment.

[–] ilon 10 years ago

I think the movie captures the essence of what a relation with a psychopath might be. The feeling that something isn't right apears when it's too late and the person is already sucked and blind to see it. Once you kind of have the knowledge of what you are dealing with you start to see or figure out those dark intentions the psychopath had in the first place. He might not know about the bag, but is a way to let the viewer know that he starts to know and understand who she is. That blast of thoughts is absolutely believable, I think. It's filled with confusion, it's not a false ending. He's having a debate with himself and looking at the point of inflexion (or the moment a psychopath cruely abandons her partner) as what should have happened with a regular person by his side.

I might be wrong, but my interpretation of the movie is able to let me enjoy it quite a lot.

I also like the camera work, serving to the characters pretty well.

It's a great horror film and a shame that they did not invest 10-20 minutes more for the downward spiral before she reapears.