The premise of the movie has been explained and if you've gotten this far you don't me to pretend that I'm a movie critic. With that being said my own opinion of the movie is quite low. I'm a fan of Takashi Miike but this goes down in the category of his not so great work along with DOA 2 and 3, and some others (many).<br /><br />The movie seems to get a free pass because it is a Takashi film and nothing Takashi does can be wrong. This is a highschoolers approach to cinema. For the rest of us we'll find and hour and a half of a kid screaming for no real reason completely annoying (and yes, this does take away from the film), the pace of the film almost reaching levels of rigomortis, and the acting...well...hmmm. <br /><br />If one is a Takashi fan you'll see it regardless to peak your interests. It lacks any originality (see the Neverending Story) or any character development from the lead character in the face of conflict other then a quite superficial one. <br /><br />As it has been pointed out this is the first film Miike has been credited with co-writing, but that doesn't mean much as non of what we'd hope would be Miike's personality would spill over into the screen. All we get are some of the token Miike shots vis the director of photography.<br /><br />The movie had the potential to be something great. The premise is not a difficult one to run wild with. But this one seemed to have been run into the ground.<br /><br />My suggestion is if you're just getting into Miike is go with some of the standards like Gozu, Ichi, and Audition. Then movie into his works like Blue's Harp, Fudoh, Rainy Dog, Bird People of China.