Angel Dust (1994)

Director: Gakuryû "Sogo" Ishii

Screenplay: Yorozu Ikuta and Gakuryû "Sogo" Ishii

Cast: Kaho Minami as Setsuko Suma; Takeshi Wakamatsu as Rei Aku; Etsushi Toyokawa as Tomoo; Ryoko Takizawa  as Yuki Takei

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #178 / An Abstract List Candidate

 

With sad eyes the camel pleads, "Kill me".

The synopsis suggests a traditional murder mystery, the kind that was popular in the West as they were here in the nineties onwards. Setsuko Suma (Kaho Minami) is a forensic investigator known for her ability to enter the mind state of killers, brought in to a seemingly random series of murders of women on crowded subway trains. All clues point to her former lover Rei Aku (Takeshi Wakamatsu), a researcher in an incredibly controversial psychological practice of deprogramming religious cult members. Inherently that evokes a couple of films like Manhunter (1986) with a couple of idiosyncratic touches, but Angel Dust is something else entirely.

Within a decade, made during a ten year absence of theatrical cinema when he worked in other mediums, what a surprising change took place to Sogo "Gakuryû" Ishii, the cult director who in the the late seventies  and early eighties started off having directed punk sci-fi films like Burst City (1982) or filming Einstürzende Neubauten performances. Into the nineties here, Ishii (long before he adopted the name "Gakuryû" as he did into the 2000s) changes completely and mixes what David Fincher's Se7en (1995) wanted to do alongside the crime thriller tropes evoked in that synopsis, and turning them into this cold, glacially oppressive piece of psychological drama. Whilst Michael Mann, director of Manhunter, is cool and collected on the dangers of entering the mind of a killer, and Fincher in Se7en had a highly elaborate art style he would chip away over the decades as he evolved, Angel Dust is undeniably without ever straying in genre tropes outside of crime and murder thrillers an incredibly unsettling psychological horror film which creeps you out to the end.

A noticeable aesthetic is here. Mid nineties Japanese pulp genre film making, Japan's psycho geographical and aesthetic style as a landscape, is shown at its richest here, from the neon soaked streets to cramped and darkly lit night train rides, with brief glimmers of natural wildlife from the outside only. All of it is at ill ease, the modern environments befitting the neurosis that Angel Dust is laced in, one immediately wrong footing viewers as the first scenes are a man and a woman in the wilderness, going on an expedition deep in a cave that seemingly makes no sense to what happens in the rest of the film. The woman is Setsuko, who is assigned on a case where a figure is killing seemingly random women on crowded subway trains with a poisoned syringe of some sort. How Setsuko is even introduced, this sequence in the cave leading to the discovery of the bones of the dead, and her to be awaken from inside an isolation tank having dreamt this, immediate sets up something dreamlike in this, setting up a film just this side of psychic and supernatural inferences being involved.

Soon into the case, from one of the first victims, we are introduced to Rei, a sinister figure who worked with a murder victim of the case who was a former member of a religious cult he deprogrammed. His sinister nature is compounded by how, whoever exactly is the killer, he has an unnatural influence over Setsuko still, a command that he uses in his work and makes him an alarming candidate for the killer. Setsuko herself finds she is falling off the rails the longer she is in the mindset of this killer to try to capture them. It is, plot wise without spoiling it, a bleak film, the ending a disturbing one as control over a person psychologically, brain washing them through suggestion, even spiritual and mental poisoning, to emotional isolation taking place and leaving one  sick.

That and how Ishii, with this pulp story plot, creates the film through a sleep and quiet ill ease. Unlike Michael Mann's aesthetic, Ishii has a plot which drifts in and out of its plot, one prolonged scene an entire video of a deprogramming of a female cult member which comes off, just with words, as torture than removing superstition from them. The sound design includes of sharp noise and jolts. The film's plot for long parts of its length is seen through other forms. Recreations of the murder on a subway train with stand ins. Security footage or photographs. On screen, neon green newspaper headlines chronicling the case. Everything is cold and distant. Plot points, like Setsuko's psychological illness the longer she stays in this case, isolating herself from her loving husband, initially the safe haven from all this, are as calmly and casually dealt with as possible without great emphasis on exposition.

It is, as this genre was coming into its popularity in the nineties onwards, an incredible rebuttal to them in how subdued it is, even the murder weapon a mere needle to the breast. The one moment which feels from a more lurid film is surreal as, the killer moving away from the subways, someone finds a pair of sever hands spinning in a washing machine. It would be silly if not in context absolutely disturbing. As Setsuko starts to lose control, everything becomes more claustrophobic, with streaks of the unconventional felt throughout. Noticeably, judging from the rest of his filmography, Ishii (to the point he changed his name) took on more mystical and abstract ideas, added them to his work. Psychology fights religious superstition transpire in the background here but neither looks good, psychology here under noble ideas but able to be used as a tool of control and death however. Even if the ending should be a happy conclusion, it comes with a numbed conclusion where, unexpectedly, a recognisable Western song plays over the end credits (The Zombies' Time of the Season) which is an inspired and eerie choice. There is, as a result, the best of balances where a film heavily reliant on a plot which drags you in on twists and turns eventually leads to an emotional resonance that lingers.

And even in terms of how idiosyncratic some of the dialogue is, Angel Dust beneath its sleek and guarded veneer is splitting with strangeness. Something from within it, which breaks out when a character is locked in a room, the television with Rei on it, even in recorded footage, telling them instructions yet saying they have freewill, lurches and causes the flesh to crawl as the film takes its time to progress. It is, as mentioned, bleak and can be seen as too uncomfortable for some. How Setsuko progresses from a strong female character to the finale in itself might be too uncomfortable for some too, but everything in Angel Dust is un-remotely exploitative or cheap, but more creepy and profounder.  

Abstract Spectrum: Claustrophobic/Cold/Disturbing/Oppressive

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None