Director: Yûta Shimotsu
Year: 2026
Country: Japan
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After arriving in a new town, a teen becomes increasingly concerned about the behavior of her fellow students, who begin to act rather bizarrely towards each other in regard to forming human pyramids for no real reason, forcing her and another student to uncover the motive behind the actions.
Review:
For the most part, this was a bizarre and tough film to get a hold of. Most of this is due to the film's fascination with conformity, as the act of presenting yourself in line with the morals of the system in creating human pyramids doesn't carry much weight. Great importance is placed on performing this task, with teachers and administrators demanding obedience in accomplishing the strange activity and threatening the ones who stray behind, failing to join in, setting up the idea of forgoing individuality at the behest of accommodating the rigid standards imposed by those above you. Not wanting to give any attention to the why as everyone tends to brazenly speak on the endeavor as if it were the most important aspect of society, the sight of them ordering students to mindlessly line up and get into human pyramids without questioning the order makes for a great touch displaying the threat of conformity and how much it pays to be involved in the system in this manner. The scenes of the zombie-like students shuffling through the halls, chanting slogans while being immovable against the attempts to prevent it from happening, offer some genuinely chilling moments as it's all quite suspenseful throughout here.
The main problem is that it never establishes anything throughout here with the kind of imposing quality that delivers a genuine genre experience. While the idea of the group being under the influence of something supernatural to account for the rash of strange behavior or being mind-controlled by a foreign agent to drive them into this situation, the whole thing is reliant on the idea of the students forming human pyramids as the greatest cause for concern throughout here. The situation is comically overdone and never once makes for a genuinely threatening or scary experience, as the thing becomes so absurd it's hard to take the concept seriously, regardless of how much it attempts to portray the pyramids as meaning something. The act of controlling others to bring them into the group-think mentality isn't the problem, but the fact that we're supposed to find people forming human pyramids as scary is more the issue here, when the whole thing about conforming is often done for the greater good instead of something meaningless and beyond goofy like it is here. It's the main stumbling block against this holding it down.
Overview: **/5
An intriguing if ultimately troublesome genre effort, there's enough going on here to be quite likable for what it is, while still being quite problematic as the main function behind this is a bit hard to get behind. Those with an interest in this style or approach will have the most to like here, while most others out there might want to heed caution with this one.
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