The Manual (AKA:- The Suicide Manual)

Original Title:- Jisatsu manyuaru

Country - Japan

Year of Production - 2003

Run Time - 86minutes

Genre - Horror

Rating - 18

Director - Osamu Fukutani

Written by - Osamu Fukutani/Hiroshi Kanno

Starring:-

Nozomi Andô - Miki Nagasawa
Kei Horie - Police Detective Nishiyama
Ayaka Maeda - Nanami Kumatani
Kenji Mizuhashi - Yuu Tachibana
Chisato Morishita - Rie Izumikawa
Yûko Nakamura - Rikki

Review

This movie is derived from a 1993 non-fiction book called "The Complete Manual of Suicide" by Wataru Tsurumui; it was a best seller in Japan! It has been found at a number of group Suicides and has been linked to the record 74 corpses found last year in Aokigahara - a wood at the foot of Mount Fuji recommended in the manual as "the perfect place to die". There have again been real circumstances of group suicides in Japan very recently! At the beginning of the film states that this is not to encourage people into suicide; but to warn people against the it… I don’t think it did either! But then we view suicide in the west much differently to how it's viewed in Japan.

This is a story about young people committing group suicide; at the scene of the first one we discover there is a DVD with an all black surface, this is the Suicide Manual! The suicidees meet up with each other and someone called Ricki (who seems to be handing out this Suicide Manual) on an internet message board! The DVD manual; like the book compares different ways of killing yourself, what hurts more and generally how to get away with it without being discovered. In an attempt to add some supernatural nonsense into the mix we are informed that people who commit suicide are never at peace and they posess the living and make them commit suicide also!

This film really doesn’t seem to go anywhere at all. I found it very hard to concentrate on this for the whole 86 minutes I have to say! The plot just doesn’t hold up… it didn't really need the supernatural bit and I don't think it added to the general nonsense feel of the film! The actors don’t come across like they're really bothered about this film. A lot of this is very derivative of other Japanese horror films… Jisatsu Circle, Ringu... this is nothing really original I’m afraid!

The effects are also pretty poor, i realise this is a very low budget affair and in general I don't mind that... howeverthe whole thing feels pretty thrown together! I can think of many other films you should try as opposed to this one.

2 out of 5

Review by Uzumaki (UK)

Released in the UK by Screen Entertainment

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