[KFCC] Crazy Lips Review

Story: Satomi peacefully lives in a small house with her mother and sister. However, her older brother, who disappeared when the police accused him of murdering four young school girls, has disturbed their peaceful living. Their house is now in constant surveillance by the press, in addition to prank calls and rocks thrown by townsfolk.

Satomi decides to ask the help of two psychic mediums to find out who is the real killer and where her missing brother is. However, the mediums methods seem a bit suspicious to Satomi at first, but it doesn’t take long before things go out of control and the two mediums have full power over the small family. With the help of a special FBI team and her newly discovered hidden psychic power, Satomi will try to fight back the two mediums before they fulfill their deadly plan.

Review: Japanese cinema has been known for their over the top movies and V-Cinema, which have been recently very popular in North America because of the works of Takashi Miike. It’s sure that CRAZY LIPS will be unappreciated by some people, as the film is not for everyone, but I would bet anything that if the movie had Miike’s name on it, people would shout “GENIUS!” Surprisingly, though, it is not Miike’s work, but of Hirohisa Sasaki, a new and unknown Japanese director that has a very promising career ahead of him.

At the moment, it’s hard to not compare his work with other Miike movies as CRAZY LIPS contain similar elements to VISITOR Q and HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS. Crazy Lips was in fact produced before these two Miike films. Gore, sex, ghost, necrophilia, singing, kung fu, supernatural and over the top characters are all very familiar elements to Miike fans, but are also very present in this Sasaki film.

Also, it is almost impossible to categorize this film. The movie starts on a typical horror –esque tone, but develops into a slapstick dark comedy. The first thirty minutes are in fact the least interesting, but when the two psychics get into frame, things really go insane.

Produced by the people behind the JUON movies, it’s no surprise that the story doesn’t make any sense and becomes hard to follow as the film progresses. The problem is that a lot of elements and ideas are not explained and left unanswered, an aspect that was not very appreciated in the JUON series either. A sequel has also been releases under the name of GORE FROM OUTER SPACE; maybe a few of these questions might be answered there.

At least those who will be able to forget the thin and nonsensical plot will probably have a good time because the movie is actually very entertaining. Plenty of oddities and weird situation will follow once you get past the beginning. The only aspect of the movie that should be a bit toned down is the sex scene as there’s a couple of rape scenes that will probably make some viewers uneasy, but the odd thing is that it also becomes a running gag along the film!

The characters are quite surprising and most of them are pretty original and interesting. Hitomi Miwa, who also appears in the Video version of JUON, is excellent in her role. But the ones who steal the show are the FBI agents. Hiroshi Abe plays the man of action and Ren Osugi, a familiar face for fans of Sabu, Kitano and Miike, even had a small and hilarious role as a TV host.

The movie is surprisingly violent, too, most of the gore will show up in the second part of the film, but the wait is well deserved. As for the small bit of kung fu action, which was choreographed by a Hong Kong stunt team, it was very dynamic and well done for the limited budget, which by the way, was mostly spent on the big finale.

CRAZY LIPS is really not for everyone, but as I said before, it is simply unfair that it might never get the recognition it deserves, except if one day Hirohisa Sasaki get some recognition for his work. If you like dark humor and to be shocked and surprised or fans of Miike stuff such as VISITOR Q, you should definitely check out the film. It’s definitely the kind of film that you don’t show to someone who is not familiar to Japanese weird V-Cinema. I personally was very surprised by this film and simply can’t wait to catch the sequel GORE FROM OUTER SPACE.

Kill them all!