When your parents hate you.
We follow two teenagers who have problems at home. The boy has a violent father and a mother who doesn’t care about him. The girl is not wanted by her parents; they want her to hang herself so they can move on with their lives. These two only have each other, but the boy is starting to become a loose cannon. He has his guardian angel in the girl who can’t stop loving and rooting for him.
In my opinion, Himizu is one of the best movies that director Sion Sono has made. His best movie is still Suicide Circle, but his best dark drama is Himizu. I just need to watch Strange Circus a second time since it sort of disappointed me after Suicide Circle.
Himizu is a dark movie where the teenagers we follow are abused physically and mentally. This is not a graphic movie, but it’s so cold and hateful toward the two teenagers. So when the end credits show up on the screen, you are left with an empty feeling.
“Who am I?” is a question that many characters ask themselves in the movie. Many characters have had a bad start in life; their lives got destroyed before they even started. So they don’t see much point in living anymore since they have no future. It’s up to the guardian angel to save the soul of the one she loves. And other older characters that live outside the house where the boy lives try to help and support him. But they are pretty irritating, and they confirm that you are watching a Sion Sono movie with these irritating and eccentric characters from hell.
The two leading actors are really good. Fumi Nikaido was on fire during this period of her career, and she became my favorite Japanese actress because of all the different roles she picked from 2011 to 2014. No one can say that she played it safe.
Shôta Sometani is also excellent as the teenage boy who hasn’t done anything wrong except for being born. He’s so good when he walks around with his body that has lost its soul. There’s nothing left in him except anger and frustration.
Unfortunately, there are also moments with too much overacting, especially the yelling, which I’m certain will frighten a lot of viewers who are not familiar with Japanese overacting when the characters yell out their dialogue. Even yours truly had enough; it was too much yelling! The last scene in the movie will make you cringe, but hey, Sion Sono is a director who’s impossible to stop when he first gets a bad idea and ruins the whole scene.
Himizu will make you freeze because of how cold the movie is, but the message gets through when we see how the world treats young and fragile minds who are innocent victims of the sick world we live in. Who can you go to and talk with when your parents hate you? Well, not many, except for people you meet who care about you and want’s to help you.
But I feel Sion Sono forgot to close the storyline of the teenage girl and what happened at her house since the parents wanted her to kill herself. The short scenes with her parents are creepy as hell, and her savior is a teenage boy who doesn’t want her help. But helping him helps her in this chaos we call life.
Himizu is a really good movie that I recommend if you are looking for a dark and depressive movie that will suck out a part of your soul. I’m not a fan of the ending. The ending before the real ending was perfect, and it captured the essence of the story.