Nami (Kumi Takiuchi) is a young woman with numerous hang-ups sprouting from a dysfunctional childhood. She inherits a small fortune that allows her to pursue various interests many of which are highly abnormal. For example Nami loves to spy on people who not unlike herself have gone crazy from loneliness. She calls these people solitarians. Perhaps due to a father fixation her favourite spying targets are old men with stiff boners. One fateful day Nami spies on an elderly gentleman (Takashi Sasano) watching porn DVDs at home. She soon transitions from a peeping... tom into a full-fledged stalker. Special Features: Interviews with Director and Cast [show more]
Here in the UK, distributor Third Window Films has made a name for itself as a champion of Asian cinema. The label has released some of the biggest titles from the continent, including Tetsuya Nakashima's Confessions, Takashi Miike's Lesson of the Evil, Shin Su-won's Pluto, and perhaps most famous of all, Shion Sono's The Land of Hope.
Their latest release sees them partnering with rising Japanese director Eiji Uchida, until now best known for films like The Last Days of the World and Black Angels. In Greatful Dead, Uchida brings together some of the genres he's previously worked in for his most bloody and dark work yet.
Newcomer Kumi Takiuchi earned one of her first credits as the young lead in the film, Nami. Takiuchi gives a fantastic performance, able to switch almost instantaneously between moments of comedy and moments of darkness.
Growing up largely abandoned by her parents and her sister, the young Nami takes up the hobby of watching loners, which she dubs 'Solitarians'. She tracks them from a distance, watching as they slowly descend into madness and eventually death, and then she takes a selfie beside their rotting corpse. Needless to say, this is not for the faint-hearted.
Much of the film takes place once she's turned 20, the age of adulthood in Japan, and is living on her own. Her hobby soon takes an even darker turn when she finds that one of her favourite Solitarians has been given the gift of hope, and she takes it upon herself to rectify this in as bloody a way as possible.
The DVD and Blu-ray releases feature subtitled versions of the film, rather than dubbed, which is very much to Third Windows' credit. The subtitled approach allows viewers to enjoy the experience just as Uchida intended, and I can't begin to imagine how a voiceover actress would have handled the young Takiuchi's skilled delivery.
Greatful Dead begins as a biting critique of some of the problems Japan's current society faces, and is utterly unflinching in its descent into the blood and gore of Nami's later actions. Fans of the darker side of Japanese cinema are definitely recommended to seek this title out, and it's sure to be an instant crowd-pleaser.
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Darkly comic Japanese horror co-written and directed by Eiji Uchida. The film follows Nami (Kumi Takiuchi), a young woman with a fetish for lonely and elderly men. Nami enjoys the subjects of her fetish from afar and takes great satisfaction in observing their daily lives. However, when Mr. Shiomi (Takashi Sasano), her latest obsession, begins taking bible classes with a young Christian missionary (Kkobbi Kim), Nami sees this as a direct threat to her source of pleasure. How far will Nami go to protect her interests?
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