Liverleaf

A bullied girl seeks to avenge the deaths of her parents, grievous injury of her sister and the fire that destroyed their home.

This was a ...meh film for me. There was some effort put into most of the characters and that's always a big thing for me. The acting was decent but the pace was a bit slow.

I've seen some reviewer's commenting on the level of gore but I wasn't impressed. I watch a lot of horror though and I may be a bit desensitized from over exposure. It just wasn't as gory as I expected.

It's not awful so, I say check it out.

I liked the progressively more violent and gore turn of this movie. The scenes are really pleasant and aesthetic and the plot itself it's interesting. It talks about bullying but takes it to an exponential level of caos, along with some nice unexpected turns.

"Liverleaf" (2018) directed by Eisuke Naitô based this story on a teen dystopian view on "bullying" and angst. The film is a cinematic interpretation of the manga comic, "Misumisô" by Rensuke Oshikiri. The main target of the bullying is focused on "Haruka Nozaki" (helmed by Anna Yamada) and her family in a nondescript small town.

Naitô stays true to the type of overtop violence found in Japanese graphic novels. Most of violence was filmed in a stylish manner, even to the clothing and injuries endured onto the teen characters.

"Liverleaf" or "Misumisô" refers to a beautiful purple flower that blooms in the winter landscapes, which why many outdoor scenes were in amidst the social snowy landscape. Nozaki's revenge on her bullies starts to toil when a snowstorm appears.

Teen actors were good at delivering psychotic behavior, like the character, "Rumi" played by Rena Ôtsuka. Aside from the celluloid teen assaults, it is a teen love story, or stories. As the film proceeds to a dwindling number of teen survivors, there are plot discovery of a triangle appears.

I had viewed it at an international film festival where most of the viewers were starting to laugh when the violent scenes came up. I feel that their laughing was to deal with the on-screen gore; I would think that Naitô would please to see these reactions.

Japan horror movies never been associated as ordinary. They came with a sense of twisting mind and often involved violence in blood, graphic, and some others in stylized way. Liverleaf follows an easy narrative that has been implemented in numerous revenge horror movies, with some twists to give some depth unlike Hollywood movies in that subgenre (ex. The Last House on the left, I Spit on Your Grave).

Liverleaf told a revenge story from a bullied teenage girl named Nazomi when her family is burned alive in their house. The story takes simplest of premise you could take, but in 2 hours of the movie, this movie also give the characters a story, something that seldom happened to a revenge film. The humanization of the characters, including the homeroom teacher's odd behavior, the silence of a girl who just witnessed the bullying, and the backstory of some bulliers, reveal much about a life full of hardships in the small town. Some of them are quite petty, but the backstory gives a sense of reason to the plot. Honestly, some of them are quite forced, because at the same time it feels weird to know that the class is filled by corrupted minds. Who must take the blame? This question probably can't be answered correctly by us, or by the characters.

In a way, this movie gives a new fresh addition to a revenge story. Sometimes it is good to have a revenge movie that only involves blood, but I never expected that gives a prolonged sequence of background gives a reality and reason that I never know needed by the subgenre.

Nozaki is a recent transfer at a junior high school in rural Japan. Most the other students are indifferent towards her, but some are beyond cruel. After her parents convince her to stay away from school until graduation, the bullies (Taeko, Rumi, Hide, Tsutomo, Risa and Kyoko) decide to ramp up their efforts and burn her house down, killing her family and gravely injuring her baby sister. Nozaki returns in silence some time after to exact revenge on all those who crossed her.

This is a by the numbers revenge thriller, similar to Kevin Bacon's "Death Sentence" or even "Leon," if Natalie Portman had been both Mathilda and Leon. Sadly, the plot has very little beyond watching the worst children ever be bloodily murdered. It does give us a little extra in seeing how most of the children live with their families, hinting at story that would have been explored more fully in the manga, but most of it is predictable (head bully Taeko has a rich but neglectful parent, the most violent female has an abusive alcoholic father, the crazy one has a nice, useless mum). In a moment of humour, the parents arrive at the school to harass the homeroom teacher, each day more and more of them appearing as more of their children disappear, all culminatin in one of the more bizarre deaths of the film.

The major fault, though, is the cinematography. Typical of Japan, the palettes and styling are all very clean and lovely to look at (blood on snow always is a winner, and Nozaki's red pea coat beneath her flowing hair as she stalks victims in the winter is quite the evocative image), but the director and photographers really struggle with everything else. The use of CGI is jarring because it does not blend well with the real footage, the special effects make up for some of the injuries goes beyond cartoonish to just plain poorly executed, and the actors react so confusingly to the violence (all done in an effort to show the cuts and wounds being inflicted). It looks amateurish and clumsy at times. The dialogue is beyond simple, as well.

With a runtime of just under 2 hours, it definitely outstays its welcome. However, with a penchant for severed achilles tendons and rusty spikes going into eyes, there's plenty of visceral carnage for gore lovers to enjoy.