Director, Uchida claims that this was originally intended to be a comic film but that now only the first half has humour. Well, I didn't notice it. We begin with the heroine as a child and being ignored by her family and are suddenly thrown with an incident at her school involving a very violent movement with a floor mop. I think I actually gasped. As an adult she develops an unusual lifestyle, not very amusing and more tan a little scary, selfie with a dead and deterorating old man anyone? I have to admit that the lady herself finds all this very amusing and speeds about with her bicycle and binoculars with a manic grin on her face. In the second half things become even more crazy, disconcerting and violent as the true horror of this film become evident. Not an easy view, this is very well made with great performances in very unusual and difficult situations but I won't be rushing to re-visit it for a little while.

Despite her best and increasingly desperate efforts to attract attention, little Nami is starved of affection, or indeed acknowledgement, from her parents. As she grows into an attractive teen (Kumi Takiuchi), she inherits great wealth, listens to appalling rock music and becomes increasingly possessive of her lonesomeness. She calls herself a Solitarian, She spends her time seeking out other Solitarians, the most extreme case being an elderly man who lived an isolated life before dying whilst watching pornography. Before reporting the incident anonymously, she takes a smiling selfie with his calcified corpse on the floor of his rubbish-strewn living room.Mr Shiomi (Takashi Sasano) is her next solitary obsession. Glorifying in observing his isolated life, Nami is then appalled that this heart-broken, faded man finds love and acceptance from his family and vows to punish him for taking away her 'property'.As events drift away from one level of bizarreness to another, and then another and another, not only does it lose track of its initial premise, but becomes little more than a series of darkly comic moments of violence and incident. The whole thing appears designed purely so the audience can scratch their collective heads and wonder what they are watching – which is exactly what happens, at least in my case. As a lesson in not ignoring your children, it's obscured by how … obscure it is. As a drama, or a comedy, or a horror, it's too fragmented to succeed. On its own terms, however, it is a film you won't forget in a hurry. There is an attempt in the last scene to marry up events with the perils of ignoring your children, which is pretty pointless considering that things have by this time run away with themselves to such an extent they cannot possibly be reasoned with – which seems to be the point, if there is one.

Whilst having read a lot of praise for Bone Tomahawk and seeing Late Phases director Adrián García Bogliano mentioned a number of times on IMDb's Horror board,I found the third horror flick chosen for viewing on IMDb's Film Festival board to be a complete unknown. Checking the films IMDb page,I found a fellow IMDber who has given me awesome recs had written a review praising the movie,which led to me getting ready to find out how grateful the dead could be.The plot:After the suicide of her dad, Nami spends the next few years comfortably living off the cash left to her in his will. Suffering a tough childhood where her dad ignored the family for his new mistress,Nami has picked up some unusual habits,one of which is watching/spying on old people. Nicknaming the people she spies on "Solitarians",Nami becomes obsessed with a lonely old man called Shiomi.Spying on her favourite loner,Nami is shocked to find that Shiomi is no longer lonely,but is now taking part in bible studies. Horrified by Shiomi now not being on his own (!) Nami decides to stop spying,and to pay Shiomi a special visit.View on the film:Skipping along to the off-beat of Nami's mind,co-writer/(along with Etsuo Hiratani) director Eiji Uchida & cinematographer Shinya Kimura spray the screen with a quirky indie vibe,as stylish slow-motion scenes of Nami walking around care-free slyly hide her nasty habits. Cutting into the gore of Nami and Shiomi's relationship, Uchida impressively keeps the bonkers nature of their relationship be a central theme to the violence,as the sharp use of slo-mo reveals the calm behind Nami's mad eyes.Gradually revealing Nami's set of horror fangs,the screenplay by Uchida and Hiratani stab Nami's habits with jet-black Comedy venom, hilariously stiffening as Nami's peaks on her loners sexual interest,to flowing over the viewer,as Shiomi gives a less than cheerful response to Nami's desire to keep him a loner. Casting an eerie shadow from Nami's troubled childhood,the writers nail it to the floor with brittle torture horror.Grinding the gory horror with a nail-gun,the writers strip away the bitterness of the Torture Horror sub-genre via dipping the action in comedic tar. Joined by a wonderfully gruff Takashi Sasano as Shiomi, Kumi Takiuchi gives a superb performance as Nami,thanks to Takiuchi smoothly threading Nami's odd,butter wouldn't melt in her mouth outer shell with a gleefully murderous grin bubbling underneath,as Nami makes the dead feel grateful.

Neglected as a child, an independently wealthy young woman spends her time spying on individuals who she considers to be as lonely and isolated as her in this decidedly offbeat film from Japan. The movie initially plays out like a quirky comedy with lead actress Kumi Takiuchi grinning from ear to ear all the time while riding her bicycle, camping on rooftops and taking notes on the lonely citizens she enjoys watching, whom she terms "Solitarians". The plot thickens though when one such "Solitarian" turns out to be less cut off from the world than she thought. First, he lets himself be smitten by Christian missionaries, then his extended family keep popping by, and things turn very horror-like as Takiuchi takes drastic measures to ensure that the man remains the "Solitarian" that she initially identified him as being. The structure of the film is hardly perfect. The young actress who plays Takiuchi as a child is equally effective, if not more so, and the film could have benefited from spending more time on her traumatised childhood, while the horror angle comes extremely late in the piece - something that results in the second half of the film feeling far superior to the first half. Never to mind, Takiuchi never falters throughout and the film is full of neat touches, such as the constant use of upbeat music to highlight her delirious view of the world, smiling as non-Solitarians are hit and assaulted. Takashi Sasano (playing the man she becomes obsessed with) holds his end up very well too, almost becoming just as irrational as her as all the madness spirals towards a close.