FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: RED ROOM (1999)

Dir. Daisuke Yamanouchi, 68 mins

Red Room will probably be too much for many, but the fact the tone isn’t entirely malicious does alleviate some of its darkest content for me.​

Japan has always had a healthy helping of splatter cinema to offer up, often tracked back to the infamous Guinea Pig films of the late 80s. But that tradition has continued on since, and Red Room is probably one of the most notorious of the movies to follow on in that wake. I have seen and reviewed the sequel here, so I did have some sort of idea of what I was letting myself in for – though the two films are a little different to one another. Anyway, let’s look at this one in isolation, then we can come to comparisons later.

Red Room is effectively presented as a sort of extreme gameshow, with four participants all having the chance to win 10 million yen (about 75,000 pounds so I gather) if they are the last person standing at the end of The King Game. The game itself is simple – there are four cards, three with a number on and one with a crown on. The person who gets the king card is able to order the other players to do whatever they like. This is all in an effort to get the other players to give up or get ‘eliminated’ from the game in some other way….

The cast of four are an interesting bunch – a husband and wife both struggling under the same crippling debt, a young woman whose motivation is never totally clear and a schoolgirl whose need for the money does become clear – but I’m not going to spoil that. Part of the interest in the movie is the whole business of guessing who the winner will be – my impression on this changed a few times throughout, and I still didn’t get it right in the end. There are also some interesting reveals throughout, and I found the dynamic between the married couple particular fascinating – the environment here allowed plenty of old resentments to come out.

Like its sequel, I came to the end of Red Room not quite sure what to make of it. There are times that the tone and style feel almost comedic, deliberately overblown, then at other moments it turns absolutely brutal and becomes incredibly hard to watch. And make no mistake – some of this will prove upsetting for many. But by the time you throw in an ending that seems to barely chime with either of those things, it’s a little confused – although in a way I didn’t mind. In fact a straight torture/gore movie would probably have been easier to deliver – there are plenty of those out there, after all. But to actually make me invest in characters and come away with a sense that I liked it, despite all its horrific content, is something else entirely.

So how does it compare to part 2? I feel like this one benefits from a shorter run time – the sequel felt a bit long even at 81 minutes, and this is much more taut and pacy. Things escalate more quickly and move from relatively innocent horseplay to full-on violence and depravity in less time. There remain surprises aplenty in both, although the finale of Red Room 2 is probably even more confounding than this one. However I felt that the shortcomings in this one felt less pronounced – the acting is overblown, but less so, and the use of the multiple cameras in this one felt better deployed.

Is it easy to watch? Good lord no. But I don’t think either of these movies are quite as grim as they’re made out to be – sure, it’ll prove too much for plenty of viewers, but I’ve seen plenty worse for utter twistedness and there is something more to both movies. In the case of Red Room, the bizarrely optimistic ending leaves a very different feeling to what I would have guessed. If you can handle the content, I’d argue this one is well worth your time.

RATING: 8.5/10. A truly odd movie, Red Room combines black comedy, deeply disturbing visuals and slow-burn character development to achieve something I don’t think I’ve quite seen done before. It does take its cues in a way from the latter parts of the Guinea Pig series, which often also threw seemingly incongruous elements together. Red Room will probably be too much for many, but the fact the tone isn’t entirely malicious does alleviate some of its darkest content for me.

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