FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: BRUTAL (2017)

Dir. Takashi Hirose, Japan, 67 minS

What is it about one word titles that are so hard to resist? In fact a search around IMDB to add all the details of this film reveals there have been a whole slew of movies called Brutal, and Taskashi Hirose’s offering – a recent release from the good folk at Unearthed Films – undoubtedly lives up to its billing. Then again, anyone who’s a regular purveyor of Japanese horror cinema will know there’s little shyness about laying on the gore and violence thick, so in that regard Brutal is following on in a fine tradition. The fact it has found a home with Unearthed, one of the most unflinching movie labels out there, should also tell its own story.

Brutal is a relatively short movie – not long over an hour total – that follows two serial killers, simply addressed here as Man and Woman. We begin with a first ‘chapter’, our male lead killing off two women that he has trapped in his house, one with a particular rough beating, asking them if they can 'understand him'. The second woman dies in an even more unpleasant fashion than the first, culminating in an opening that is grim, grimy and hard not to wince at least a little when watching.

Our second ‘chapter’ shows our female killer with a sort of montage, almost a ‘best of' her kills, before she meets a man in a bar and decides to take him home. There’s a strangely beautiful and hypnotic scene in the middle here as the two of them talk in the car while the scenery shoots by – it’s really gorgeous and honestly feels as though it belongs to another film entirely, although you could argue it’s a sort of breather from the brutality that is tactically offered up by the director. When the two get home, we find out her male companion knows what she has been doing, and sets about to kill her himself as a sort of retribution or revenge for all the male lives she has taken. He meets an equally nasty end after a tough-looking fight scene between the two, again a very effective and crunching confrontation.

I don’t want to spoil the end of this one, so I won’t except to say that the meeting of these two opposite yet eerily similar forces is inevitable, and the climax if anything is even more brutal than what has gone before. However there was something about the ultimate message here I didn’t like, and that made me feel distinctly uneasy as a viewer, so I’m going to downgrade it somewhat for that – again, I can’t say too much more without giving it all away. You’ll just have to watch it for yourself and see what you make of it, and I expect it to be the source of plenty of debate going forward.

Brutal feels like a really promising concept, and it looks great both in its depiction of absolute horror and nihilism as well as one abstractly beautiful scene in the middle. The lead performances are effective, and the more unpleasant scenes look uncomfortably realistic. There’s a splash of inspiration from the likes of Ichi The Killer and American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock here without a doubt, but it doesn’t quite deliver the brilliant finale of those two pieces. If you’re a fan of Asian extreme then you should check this one out – I don’t think it’s a leader in the field, but putting my own discomforts about the ending aside there’s plenty to like here for fans of hardcore serial killer movies.

RATING: 6.5/10. A hard one to rate, as I did enjoy it for the most part and really respect what the actors and director achieved with this one. It looks great whether it’s in violent, chaotic mode or in calming, dreamy mode, and the breaking down into chapters feels like a clever device and a nice way to build to a finale. However it’s a denouement that to me, personally, really missed the mark. Some people might love this ending, but it simply wasn’t for me, so what could easily have been a 9 or maybe even more slips down to a 6.5/10 all told.