Japanese Horror

Disclaimer: Suicide Club is super weird at times and by weird I mean weird! I literally had a moment of serious jaw dropping, like the first time I watched John Waters’ Pink Flamingos…but I digress. That being said, this film has become a cult classic in its own right and the meaning underlying the film still holds up extremely well today. Now on to Noriko’s Dinner Table (NDT), this prequel fills in necessary gaps but it plays out more like a three hour long drama. So if you are seeking gore or scares, NDT might not be for you. If you skip it, you will still get the gist of Suicide Club.

Aside of the intermittent strangeness, Suicide Club was way ahead of its time. The film investigates a series of suicides sweeping across the nation. In doing so it reveals what happens when there is a break down in connections between people. Both Suicide Club and Noriko’s Dinner Table focus particularly on the loss of connection between family members. In Suicide Club this is visible in the familial interactions for example when the children visibly go on watching television as their father tries to hold a family meeting. Later, this same father comes home and doesn’t even notice his child is completely covered in blood. Noriko’s Dinner Table takes this one step further when both daughters run away to Tokyo to live amongst rental families because their father never understood them. Over and again Noriko and her sister Yuka make it clear how disconnected they felt from their father.

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