Flowers of evil No sooner had Mizuki transferred from one school to another because of an unacceptable incident for a modern schoolgirl, than she had already faced perverse bullying from peers. But she could not even imagine that in addition to students with sadistic tendencies, the school also has a concerned classroom teacher and head-turned rapists, physical assistants! And that's not counting out-of-phase parents who like to have sex in a pile of trash right in the home kitchen. Mizuki meets a couple of losers like her and dreams of revenge for bullying, but after especially cruel games, a red flower suddenly begins to grow inside her brain.
Hisayasu Sato is known in narrow circles thanks to the insane arthouse “All Blood”, in which the viewer poured an original rainbow of perversion, sadism and self-cannibalism. The film was a cross between Zion Sono's "Suicide Club" and any black girl with thrash elements and "pinku eiga" in the spirit of "Hell Girl 1999". Judging by "Hana-Dama" (translated as "Spirit of a Flower"), the manner of shooting the director has not changed, it is still the same low-budget representative of the Japanese Brainsploitation, aimed at savoring human vices in all their beauty and abomination.
The plot can be visually divided into chapters, each of which stands out by a short scene of the evolution of the symbolic flower in the head of the main character. With each stage, events become more tense, and indifference and detachment turn into anger and rage. Behind the common household plot are typical problems of society, such as bullying, parental indifference, “artificial” education in school, as well as already fermented human lies and duplicity. The metaphor of the flower is a force ready to put an end to the general madness and bring out all the sins of the fallen Japanese society, turning everything around into a post-apocalyptic bloody orgy with no beginning or end (almost literally). One can see the resemblance to the animated series "Aku no hana" (Flowers of evil), there was something similar and with each illusory push of the plant, the characters fell deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of their desires. But closer to the sabj will still be "Visitor Q" Takashi Miike, with his hypertrophied and shocking satire, which went beyond all possible limits of decency. And although Sabj is not a comedy (even black), but it can make you smile nervously in places.
The acting here is consistently inexpressive and resembles a staged performance, but does not cause rejection due to full compliance with the original plan of the director (which he strongly adhered to), and why scold the actors in such sodomy, designed for a specific fun? There is almost no music, although occasionally flashed psychedelic ambient \ noise themes in the spirit of "Boris" and tuned in the right way. Operating work and visual, despite the general cheapness, sometimes give out stunning angles and frames worthy of a desktop or personal selection.
In general, of the works that I saw from this director, “Hana-Dama” I liked much more interesting, but prohibitively monotonous “Solid Blood” and stylish, but not the most expressionless novella “The Caterpillar” from the almanac “Ad Rampo”. The film can offer topical topics for discussion, an interesting visual series and a couple of memorable scenes containing thrash, angst and sodomy. It is recommended for fans of low-budget and experimental dramatic thrillers with a large dose of sexual overtones, but not sliding into a total horsplotsion or eroguro in the spirit of the works of Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura.
8 out of 10