Well kids, this is it, this is the one, the camel that broke the strawman's hat.

Holy COW is this a twisted movie. I have seen a lot of movies in my day, and a lot have been sick - namely the cannibal movies I need to review in here some day soon - but none were as dark, and really, as deep as Suicide Circle. And as hard as it was to watch.I loved every minute of it.

Suicide Circle begins normally enough with several dozen school girls entering a subway station to await a train. As the train approaches though all the girls begin a countdown as they clasp one another's hands and as the train is right about to the station all fifty-something of them leap to their deaths in front of the train, thus beginning a deadly cycle that will soon send everyone into a nightmarish downward spiral. Suddenly there is a rash of unexplained suicides sweeping the countryside and the police can do nothing to stop them. Can in fact only watch and hope a lead turns up. When one does though, the mystery deepens and the horror grows as the police find that their lead is a mysterious bag that turns up at some of the suicides, a bag which contains the several hundred patches of human skin sewn together. The suicides mount and the police, desperate for any clue, get a strange phone call that insists that the Suicide Club, as some teens have dubbed it, does not exist, but that there is a method to the madness, and they are not getting what it is. As the madness spirals out of control though, even the police themselves become part of the suicide club and it seems as if no one will find an answer to it all before it's too late. Unless, that is, a young girl who has lost her boyfriend to the rash of suicides, can figure out the coded messages being sent via music, phones, and even computers, and get to the bottom of the suicides and what they all mean.

This is one of the darkest, meanest, and hardest to watch movies I have ever run across. Ever. Suicide Club pulls no punches, and it really does turn your stomach when you see some of the miserably sad deaths. But never does this movie exploit the death, and never does it come off as a joke. And in the end, there is a reason behind it all, and when it's revealed, it gives the movie a depth, and really, a meaning that makes the film all the more powerful. This is a movie that I hope gets to be seen, as I hope that Battle Royale gets to be seen, because both are very interesting, very challenging, very dark movies that deserve to be released.

Suicide Club was a bootleg DVD my friend got at the last comic con in Detroit but it's a great quality and there is no artifacting and has a pretty darned good menu system. The film was made very well, and shows its strength in one particular montage where it shows several people killing or hurting themselves to an innocuous pop song, and it is that scene that takes the movie to the deepest parts of the water, the part that's JUST deep enough so we can't touch bottom and know something lurks beneath us. Waiting. And it is this sense of dread that builds in the film and gives it its power, because they AREN'T afraid to alienate the audience to get to the heart of what they have to say. Most American movies don't have the guts to do it, which is why Asian films have such a dark magic to them.

This is NOT a film for everyone. I suspect that it won't even see a release in America, which will be a shame, but not a surprise. But if you like dark, gritty, brutally freaky movies, well friend, you've found your fix. A lot of people will hate this movie for what it appears to be without seeing what it is, which would be a shame. It's not an easy film to watch, and not an easy film to like, but it is a film that you will never forget. American horror wishes it were this gutsy and deep.

.c.