Gakkô ura saito

With the name Tokyo Gore School, you'd be forgiven for thinking Yohei Fukuda's second feature film to be a gore-fest like the similarly-named Tokyo Gore Police. But, unlike that 2008 effort, this has something rather more topical at its core than rampaging, blood-thirsty mutants. While an effectively stylish and amusingly exaggerated view of schoolyard politics, Yohei Fukuda's Tokyo Gore School lacks the balance to make it either a relevant social commentary or convincing satire. And while the fight scenes at times thrill, they are repeatedly undermined by the feeling that, in a more stable context, the whole thing would have performed above the expectations set by its unofficial predecessor Tokyo Gore Police. DWS

This is not a bad movie...let that be said right now. The title, however, is totally misleading. I can only imagine it's trying to cash in on the popularity of Tokyo Gore Police which totally lived up to it's name. This movie has very little gore (or none, depending on your definition of "gore"). A better title would have been something like "Tokyo Fight School" or something along those lines. Terrible choice of title aside, it's really not a bad film.

Owing at least some of it's story to movies like Battle Royale, it's basically a teen-vs.-teen fight movie. Basically, a website has a bunch of kids' names on it and they all have some sort of secret they're fighting to keep a secret. Kids get points for "defeating" other kids and sending info to the site from their mobile phones. With these points they can delete their own data or cash them in for money. It's really a bit more well thought out than all of that, but I'd say that's a fair summary. It's a bit low budget, but not in a totally repulsive and terrible way. Everyone plays their parts quite well and the story moves along quite nicely and never lingers on itself.

The one thing I don't understand is why the Japanese are really the only people (aside from perhaps the British) that are willing to depict teenagers capable of terrible violence. Here in the U.S. violence is our bread and butter, but the only movies you'll see depicting teens as they really are (let alone violent) seem to be indie films that only a handful will ever see. I'd definitely recommend the movie to anyone who knows that the title is total crap.

This movie was sabotaged by its own PR team.

Putting "gore" in the title is supposed to be like a red handkerchief in the back pocket of your jeans, letting you know what you're getting into. I think the very title is what gave people a misleading expectation that wasn't fulfilled. And thus, a tainted view of the actual movie -- which was almost good, with some rare and surpisingly horrific moments.

And THAT was the biggest "jump scare" of them all: finding out that Tokyo Gore School was on a much higher tier than other movies of its ilk. Of course, that means that there were more BORING parts e.g., people talking to each other, kissing, introspection, etc. But the boring movie part of a supposedly GORE movie rendered the movie an almost good movie.

The lead was cute enough to keep looking at.

Seems like he actually knew his way through a mid-air swirl and twist.

The movie kept my interest WITHOUT the hoped for gore.

But still, I was satisfied.

BUT -- there WAS some gore. Don't get it twisted.

Just not all that much. Acting happened instead.

But we were tainted with a misleading brain meme that caused us to twist our balloon animal of attention a certain way, and then those expections and hopes were destroyed.

But on the bright side, there's usually a friend that isn't so much into gore, horror, and violence. So you compromise:

Tokyo Gore School is a perfect movie for you two to enjoy together.

Right, well if this classifies as horror, then I am a pink bunny rabbit! "Tokyo Gore School" is without a doubt the most questionable and boring movies I have been bought from Amazon in a long, long time. Especially because with a title like "Tokyo Gore School", there was absolutely no gore in the movie at all.

And horror? Seriously? A stupid game of having to beat up other students to earn points and learn of their deepest, darkest secrets qualifies as horror? Hardly so.

The storyline in "Tokyo Gore School", well think "Battle Royale", then dumb it down and add a teenage pop-phenomena ingredient, then you have "The Hunger Games", then dumb it down another step and spice it up with more teenage pop-phenomena, and you end up with "Tokyo Gore School".

The story in this movie was as weaker in taste than plain tap water. There was absolutely no point to this movie in any way, and after about an hour or so of people running around and fighting one another (not overly well, mind you), then I simply gave up on this movie. There just simply was no leverage or anything even remotely interesting to keep me glued to the screen.

How this movie managed to score such a high rating is beyond me, but I assume there must be a massive Japanese teenage audience rating it. This movie was, simply put, just downright stupidity painted on a movie canvas.

I am rating "Tokyo Gore School" a 2 our of 10 rating. It manages not to score a total and utterly bottomscaping 1 out of 10 rating, because the movie production was actually adequate and the people hired for this movie were doing good enough attempts and jobs with their given roles - despite having absolutely nothing to work with.

This is pure boredom and pointlessness wrapped up in a live Manga wrapping and served as a movie.

For a movie with such a small pool of resources, the film is phenomenal. The acting is convincing, the fight scenes are choreographed in a way that lends real weight to them, and the themes are much more relatable than the usual drivel that plagues the cinemas these days. Would be a 10 if a few minor things were tweaked to cater to my taste, but the film is amazing. It's a shame that it's not very widely known.