Tag
When the wind blows...
released OUT NOW! 2015 | 15 | Blu-ray & dVd (dual format)
Director sion sono
Cast reina Triendl, Mariko shinoda, erina Mano, Yuki sakurai
There’s more than a hint of Final Destination about this gruesome tale of a schoolgirl running from death in multiple realities. A Japanese bloodbath that’ll make the steeliest horror fan cringe, the first scene sees teenage Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) narrowly miss being cut in half as a deathly wind slices through her school bus and kills everyone else on-board. A terrified Mitsuko runs from the carnage, and soon finds herself in another world.
Tag doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. At times it’s a peep show of gore, queasily revelling in shots of short-skirted schoolgirls being peppered with bullets. At other times a fairytale narrative starts to emerge. Like a blood-flecked deer, Mitsuko dashes from one reality to another, eyes wide and glassy with tears. At one point she finds the remains of schoolfriends lying across a river; pale and still, it’s as if they’ve been enchanted into an eternal slumber.
The film also brims with feminist iconography, and it often feels like Mitsuko is really running from the violence of becoming a woman, the spilled blood representing fear of menstruation and the loss of virginity. Unfortunately Tag’s bloodlust will repel anyone without a taste for gore, and the idea of a killer wind elicits awkward laughs rather than chills.
Extras Trailer. Kimberley Ballard
Tag was loosely adapted from the Yusuke Yamada novel Riaru Onigokko, previously filmed in 2008 as The Chasing World.