Sion Sono is a director of extremes ¡ª including an extreme dislike of being categorized. Just when you thought you had him pegged as a maker of violent black comedies with classical music scores, such as ¡°Ai no Mukidashi¡°(¡°Love Exposure¡°), he turns out heartfelt, albeit still violent, dramas with nuclear disaster themes, such as ¡°Himizu¡± and ¡°Kibo no Kuni¡± (¡°The Land of Hope¡°).
¡°Real Onigokko¡± (¡°Tag¡°) is his latest, and the most bizarre attempt to subvert whatever stereotypes still exist about a so-called Sono film. It looks to be the latest entry in a series of adaptations about a deadly game of ¡°tag¡± played with unwilling participants, based on Yusuke Yamada¡¯s 2001 novel set in a dystopian future society. The novel inspired a hit 2008 movie adaptation, which generated four sequels as well as a TV mini-series.
Sono¡¯s film, however, is neither a sequel nor a spin-off; his original script that has nothing to do with the novel, save for the title. (He claims not to have read it prior to the start of filming.) The ¡°tag¡± element survives ¡ª the film is essentially an 85-minute chase sequence ¡ª but the ¡°game¡± being played defies all logic, except that of a nightmare. And yet it made good, scary sense to the non-rational side of my admittedly scrambled brain.
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