Over the last week, I've been on a full-on Hisayasu Sato kick, starting on August 15th, the mans birthday and I've been revisiting his filmography. It's one of those descents where once you're in, you're just in for the long haul. This binge-watch trip landed me back at Tôsatsu repooto: Insha! Turtle Vision, which isn't a film so much as it's a fever dream caught on a cursed VHS. The aesthetic is so specific and messed up, with every grainy, washed-out frame carrying a kind of suffocating weight.
The whole thing unfolds through a bunch of peeping tom scenes, but the way Sato frames them from odd, twisted angles like the camera's hiding in a corner-makes it less about being hot and more about a deeply unnerving feeling of intrusion. It's a constant, chill-inducing reminder of how fragile the line between public and private really is.
The movie's core is all about trauma and how it just gets twisted and weaponized. This young woman, messed up after being violated on a rooftop, develops this psychic wound that just boils over. During her sleepwalking episodes, she lets her rage off the leash, luring dudes to their doom and blinding them with a box cutter. It's a universe where trauma is a tangible thing, transmitted through a camera lens and spilling out into violence. The camera itself is a major player, almost a fetish object that just records everything and keeps the whole terrible cycle going. The sex scenes are deliberately shot to feel cold and detached, not to turn you on, but to hammer home the theme of disconnection and abuse. It's a feeling that runs through all the characters; they're all navigating a world where real human connection has been replaced by the cold, mechanical gaze of a camera.
Ultimately, Turtle Vision is a deranged deep dive into human depravity and the act of seeing. Sato's laser focus on eyes-the gouging, the unsettling stares, the camera lens as a replacement for human sight-is a constant punch to the face about how we perceive things and how we're complicit in the horrors we witness. He fills the film with surreal, messed-up moments: a camera's zoom sounding like a slow, intentional violation, a weird telepathic link between sisters, characters trying to talk it out in video therapy sessions. By the time you hit the final, brutal confrontation on the rooftop, the line between victim and aggressor is completely blurred. Turtle Vision is an urban nightmare that gets under your skin and just lives there, a film that doesn't offer easy answers, just the unsettling reality of its own creation.
