What was perhaps intended here was a Japanese Memories of Murder or, given the violence and bold yellow timestamps that punctuate the film, something Tarantino-esque, but director Sion Sono takes his subject matter, the depraved and deeply disturbing real-life crimes of Matsunaga Futoshi and his spouse Junko Ogata and wallows in their every minute horrific detail, and then, perhaps recognising how unedifying, how unrewarding it all is, asks his audience to instead be interested in a second, more-than-highly-unlikely case of serial murder that bookends the gore - and that convolution comes with a loooooooong and irrelevant backstory of lesbian love during a high school production of Romeo and Juliet, nothing to do with Matsunaga, so turns to nonsense whatever lofty aspirations, if any, Sono had in mind.
★★☆☆☆
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